“Maybe they do that way in Texas, Nola.”
“How?”
“Love and ride away, as you said. I never heard of any of them doing it, except figuratively, in the regular army.”
Nola suspended her brushing and looked at Frances curiously, a deeper color rising and spreading in her animated face.
“Oh, you little goose!” said she.
“Mostly they hang around and make trouble for people and fools of themselves,” said Frances, in half-thoughtful vein, her back to her visitor, who had stopped brushing now, and was winding, a comb in her mouth.
Nola held her quick hand at the half-finished coil of hair while she looked narrowly at the outline of Frances’ form against the window. A little squint of perplexity was in her eyes, and furrows in her smooth forehead. Presently she finished the coil with dextrous turn, and held it with outspread hand while she reached to secure it with the comb.
“I can’t make you out sometimes, Frances, you’re so funny,” she declared. “I’m afraid to talk to you half the time”—which was in no part true—“you’re so nunnish and severe.”
“Oh!” said Frances, fully discounting the declaration.