Every afternoon the four girls met at the home of one or the other of the quartette, bringing sewing or fancy work. They usually sat indoors, for if a neighbor conversationally inclined had happened to come along while they were occupying the porch the situation might have been embarrassing. Amy made a valiant effort to revive a finger alphabet they had used in school to carry on extended conversations across a school room. But though it had not taken long for the girls to refresh their memories of the letters, they found it much harder work to converse after the fashion of the deaf and dumb than it had seemed when they were younger, and for the most part conversation languished. They sat and sewed, each vaguely cheered by the proximity of her fellow sufferers, though all the time conscious that this was an abnormally long week.
But long as the days were, each came to an end in time. Amy had fallen in the way of apprising Aunt Phoebe by post-card that another day had been passed in silence. "Tell Mr. Frost he might as well make out his check now," she wrote at the conclusion of the third day. "We haven't spoken yet, and now we've learned the secret, there isn't the least danger that any one will speak before the week is up."
As the days went by, the vigilance of the girls increased instead of relaxing. Each realized that a single inadvertent exclamation from the lips of one would render vain the effort and sacrifice of all. This realization got rather on their nerves, and Ruth particularly, showed it.
"It's the most absurd thing I ever heard of," declared Mr. Wylie at breakfast one morning, as Ruth came downstairs heavy-eyed. "You girls call yourselves college women, don't you? This affair is worthy of a bunch of high-school Freshmen."
"I think Ruth wants me to remind you," said Mrs. Wylie, as her daughter looked at her appealingly, "that they mean to use the hundred dollars in sending a little girl to school."
"But no man in his senses is going to pay good money for anything like this. Who is he, anyway?"
"A sort of Uncle of Amy's, didn't you say, Ruth?"
As Amy's relationship to Uncle Philander-Behind-His-Back was too complicated to explain without the assistance of language, Ruth contented herself with nodding.