The rebuked maiden chuckled mischievously. “I ain’t, though,” she said inelegantly, “but if ever there was a romance of the Wild West written that I haven’t read, I hope I’ll hear of it soon. I’m daffy about the life. Truth is, I’d heaps rather meet a cowgirl than I would a younger daughter of——”
But Gwynette, with a proud toss of her handsome head, had swept from the room, leaving Beulah to mirthfully follow, accompanied by Pat, whose dark looks boded no good. Beulah drew her friend back and closed the door. “Child,” she remonstrated, “don’t take Gwyn’s loftiness so much to heart. I think she is just as superlatively selfish as you do, and I also think she treats her invalid mother shamefully, but you know we can’t go around this world telling everyone just what we think of them. It isn’t done in the best society. Gwyn has her good points, too, otherwise we wouldn’t have been chumming with her, would we?”
“Well, take it from me. I’ve chummed my last. After tonight I’ll choose my friends, not have them chosen for me.”
“Meaning what?”
“You know as well as I do that because our three mothers were in the same set at home, we were all packed off here together, but come, I’ll try to get some pleasure out of this idiotic party.”
When they reached the lower hall, they found all of the girls who had been invited waiting for Madame Vandeheuton, who was to be the evening’s chaperone. She was a timid little French woman who felt that the girls were always making fun of her efforts at speaking English, and so she usually kept quiet, except when she was teaching her dearly loved native tongue. Gwynette had especially asked that Madame Vandeheuton be permitted to accompany them, since they could not go without one of the teachers.
Clare Tasselwood was gorgeously arrayed in a brocaded gold velvet gown with a crownlike arrangement of pearls bound about her mass of soft yellow hair. She looked more than ever regal. Gwynette sat beside her in the bus and was her constant companion throughout the evening. The ballroom of The Palms had been reserved for this party and the fifteen cadets were charmed with the pretty girls from the select seminary, but handsome Clare was undeniably the belle.
Each time that a dance was concluded, Gwyn asked her partner to take her to that part of the salon to which Clare’s partner had taken her.
Harold Poindexter-Jones noticed this after a time and asked slangily: “What’s the big idea, Sis? Is the tall blonde a new crush?”
Gwyn’s haughty reply was: “Harold, I consider your language exceedingly vulgar. If you wish to know, this party is being given in honor of Clare Tasselwood, whose father is a younger son of English nobility.”