"I should have known I had made a mistake," Hildegarde lamented, "when you never said a word about Isabel. I don't know how I could have been so ridiculously stupid."
But for all her dismay, she laughed. Indeed if laughter aids digestion, there was little danger that Amy's biscuits would disagree with any one, even Robert, who had dispatched such an extravagant number.
While Amy cleared the table and brought in the dessert, Hildegarde went to the phone and explained matters to a young woman whose preliminary stiffness melted as Hildegarde reviewed the situation. And then Hildegarde hurried back to inform her brother that they must go over as soon as he had finished. "She was as sweet as she could be, but she said they had waited dinner an hour."
"So it's up to you to 'gobble and git,'" quoted Amy, dishing out the preserves with a lavish hand.
"I'm not going to be hurried over that fruit cake," declared Bob. "It carries me back to the merry Christmas time."
"It ought to, for it's a Christmas cake, but it's been kept in a tin box with an apple and I hope it isn't dry. It was all I had in the cake line." Amy paused to laugh again. "I really must stop," she exclaimed, wiping her moist eyes. "They say that laughing at meal-time makes one fat, and I don't dare risk another pound."
"Can't have too much of a good thing," declared Bob Carey with a significant glance at the flushed face. Strictly speaking, Amy was perhaps the least pretty of the four Friendly Terrace girls; but good humor has a charm, and a face radiant with fun can hold its own against discontented beauty any day. There was such frank admiration in the look the young man bent upon her, that Amy's cheeks grew hot with an unwonted self-consciousness.
The brother and sister left with evident reluctance. "Now we've had dinner with you," said Hildegarde, "you must dine with us very soon."
"Oh, this doesn't deserve to be counted," Amy laughed. "I'll ask you again some day and show you what I can do if I really try."
"No, don't," pleaded Bob. "Have us again when you're going to have biscuit. It's so much jollier to be informal than to work the society racket." And then Hildegarde carried him off, protesting that, if they didn't hurry, Avery Zall would not believe a word of her excuse.