The great river lay like shimmering liquid gold, the air was filled with the warm, pungent odors of the late autumn woods, and a soft haze rested upon the opposite hills.
“Here in my room,” answered Eleanor. “What is it? What do you want? I can’t come just this minute. Come up if it’s important.” The voice was somewhat muffled as though the speaker’s head were covered.
Constance bounded up the stairs, hurried across the hall and entered the large third-story front room which Eleanor occupied. There was no sign of its occupant.
“More experiments I dare say,” she murmured as she entered, crossed the room and pushed open the door leading into a small adjoining room whereupon her nostrils were assailed by odors not of Araby—the blessed.
“Phew! Ugh! What an awful smell! What under the sun are you doing? If you don’t blow yourself to glory some day I shall be thankful,” she ended as she pinched her nostrils together.
“Shut the door quick and don’t let the smell get through the house or mother will go crazy when she gets home. Yes, it is pretty bad, but tie your handkerchief over your nose and then you won’t mind it so much. As for blowing myself to glory, perhaps that will be my only way of ever coming by any, so I ought to be willing to take that route. But what do you want?” concluded Eleanor, pouring one smelly chemical into a small glass which contained another, whereupon it instantly became a most exquisite shade of crimson.
Constance watched her closely without speaking. Presently she said:
“Well I dare say it is ‘everyone to her fancy,’ as the old lady said when she kissed her cow (Jean could appreciate that, couldn’t she? She kisses Baltie often enough) but I’d rather be excused when chemical experiments are in order. Don’t for the life of me understand how you endure the smells and the mess. What is that horrid looking thing over there?” and Constance pointed to a grewsome-looking object stretched upon a small glass table at the farther side of the room.
“My rabbit. I got it at the school laboratory and I’ve been examining its respiratory organs. They’re perfectly wonderful, Constance. Want to see them? I’ll be done with this in just a minute.”
“No I don’t!” was the empathic negative. “I dare say it’s all very wonderful and interesting and I ought to know all about breathing apparatus——es, or apparatti, or whatever the plural of our wind-pump machine is, but if I’ve got to learn by hashing up animals I’ll never, never know, and that’s all there is about it. I’ll take my knowledge on theory or supposition or whatever you call it. But I’ve nearly forgotten to tell you the news. I’ve had a letter from Mrs. Hadyn, Mr. Stuyvesant’s aunt, the one he is named for you know, asking me to help at the candy counter at the Memorial Hospital Fair, week after next, and, incidentally, contribute some of my ‘delicious pralines and nut fudge’—that’s in quotes remember,—and remain for the dance which will follow after ten-thirty on the closing evening. She will see that I reach home safely. How is that for a frolic? I’ve been wild for a dance the past month.”