She was hoarse, however, as was Ruth. Somehow, the colds the two girls had caught in some mysterious way, continued to cling to them. Agnes was so afraid that her older, and usually so much more sensible sister, would at the last moment refuse to go to the party that she did not know what to do. She confessed this to Neale O’Neil.
“If you ask me,” said the boy with more gravity than he usually displayed, “I think you’d both be sensible if you cut the party. I hate to hear you hacking around like a dull meat-ax, Aggie.”
“How horrid!” she cried.
He grinned ruefully. “It threatens a bad night. I’ll make you as warm as I can in the car. But it isn’t like a limousine.”
“Oh, dear,” sighed Agnes, the young elegant. “I think we should have a closed car for winter. If Ruth would only speak to Mr. Howbridge about it——”
When the evening drew in and the time arrived for them to start for the Poole house, Neale O’Neil brought the car to the side door. Ruth and Agnes appeared, bundled in their furs, but of course, and especially on Agnes’ part, with a plentiful display of the thinnest of silk hose above dancing pumps.
“Whew!” whistled Neale, holding open the tonneau door for the sisters. “The foolish virgins certainly are in evidence to-night. It’s going to snow and hail and sleet and everything else mean, before we get home.”
“See that you put in the tire chains then, Neale,” was all that Ruth vouchsafed him.
Perhaps, already, she was secretly admitting the folly of this venture.