CHAPTER XIV.
DEAREST DESIRES
On the day following the meeting of the two girls on the rustic bridge over Maiden Hair Falls, Jenny, true to her promise, drove to the seminary ostensibly to deliver an order of honey and eggs, but a girl in brown rode with her on the high front seat when Dobbin turned out of the school gates. Another girl was watching them from her wide, upper window. Turning back into the room, she remarked to two others who were trying to study: “That Lenora Gale must belong to the bourgeoise. She is actually going for a ride with the granddaughter of my mother’s servants.”
Patricia Sullivan turned a page in the book she was conning and remarked without looking up: “Gwyn, how can you expect to win honors if you never open your books?”
The girl addressed sank languidly into a comfortable chair, picked up her novel and replied, as she found her place: “Me, win honors? Why should I, pray? Does it make one a more winsome debutante? You must know that this is to be my last year of confinement within the walls of a seminary. Ma Mere has promised to give me a coming-out party when I am eighteen which will dazzle even blasé San Francisco.”
Beulah arose, as she said rather impatiently: “Well, Gwyn, just because you do not wish to learn is no reason why Pat and I should follow in your footsteps. I’m going to our own room where I can study uninterrupted.”
“I’ll go with you.” Patricia arose to accompany her friend. “Au revoir!”
Gwynette, having found her place, was too absorbed in her story to reply.
Meanwhile Jenny and Lenora were having the happiest kind of time riding down the gently sloping hill, now in the sunlight and again in the shadow of great overhanging trees.
“Has anything pleasant happened since yesterday?” Lenora asked with a side glance at the beaming face of the driver.
“Yes, indeed,” the other girl nodded gleefully. “I passed 100 per cent in two subjects and over 90 per cent in all the others.”