Ralph turned away after a fleeting glance at the girl’s face as it was uplifted to his roommate. He had not dreamed that she could be as beautiful as that expression of love had made her.
Dick was replying, “Oh, it doesn’t much matter when it happened, dear. The big thing is that it did happen at all.”
Then, when they were in the big green car (the front seat was wide enough to hold all three of them), Dick began to ask questions.
“How is Gwen now?” was the first of them. He was pleased to hear that the girl, but a year Roberta’s senior, was much better and visiting his sister, Phyllis.
Then it was that Bobs thought of something. “Why, Ralph,” she said, “you never did have an opportunity to meet my beautiful sister, Gwendolyn, did you? She hasn’t been strong enough to visit with strangers, and now she has gone away for a whole month.”
Dick smiled as he said to the driver: “Bobs is giving herself a compliment when she calls Gwendolyn beautiful, for the family resemblance between the two girls is very striking.”
Roberta laughed. “I should say that it must be, Dick. Did I ever write you about the time a stage manager thought that I was Gwen, and I actually had to do a song and dance? I laugh every time I think of it. Gloria said afterwards that it was a natural mistake, for though I am not as sylph-like as my sister, we do look very much the same.”
Ralph smiled, but he made no response. His thought was commenting: “As though anyone could be like you, Bobs.”
It was noon when the Pensinger mansion was reached, and Roberta told the lads that she wasn’t going to ask them in just then, as she had to do some writing for Mr. Jewett that must be delivered that afternoon, but she invited them both to supper, if they weren’t afraid to eat her cooking. Dick said he certainly would reappear as soon as she would permit him to come, but Ralph had an engagement with his Dad. As that was not unusual, Bobs did not think that this time it was an excuse to remain away, as indeed it was.
Roberta turned at the house door to wave to the lads in the car that was starting away. Vaguely she wondered what they would talk about. How little she knew of the aching heart that one of them was so bravely trying to hide.