Linda stopped as if dazed. The wonderment in which she looked at Eileen was stamped all over her. A surprised braid of hair hung over one of her shoulders. Her hands were surprised, and the skirt of her dress, and her shoes flatly set on the floor.
“Well, I’ll be darned!” she ejaculated, and then walked to where she could face Eileen, and seated herself without making any attempt to conceal her amazement.
“Linda,” said Eileen sweetly, “you would stand far better chance of being popular and making a host of friends if you would not be so coarse. I am quite sure you never heard Mama or me use such an expression.”
For one long instant Linda was too amazed to speak. Then she recovered herself.
“Look here, Eileen, you needn’t try any ‘perfect lady’ business on me,” she said shortly. “Do you think I have forgotten the extent of your vocabulary when the curling iron gets too hot or you fail to receive an invitation to the Bachelors’ Ball?”
Linda never had been capable of understanding Eileen. At that minute she could not know that Eileen had been facing facts through the long hours of the night and all through the day, and that she had reached the decision that for the future her only hope of working Linda to her will was to conciliate her, to ignore the previous night, to try to put their relationship upon the old basis by pretending that there never had been a break. She laughed softly.
“On rare occasions, I grant it. Of course a little swear slips out sometimes. What I am trying to point out is that you do too much of it.”
“How did you ever get the idea,” said Linda, “that I wanted to be popular and have hosts of friends? What would I do with them if I had them?”
“Why, use them, my child, use them,” answered Eileen promptly.
“Let’s cut this,” said Linda tersely. “I am not your child. I’m getting to the place where I have serious doubt as to whether I am your sister or not. If I am, it’s not my fault, and the same clay never made two objects quite so different. I came up here to fight, and I’m going to see it through. I’m on the war-path, so you may take your club and proceed to battle.”