"Probably he was only joking. A hundred dollars is a hundred dollars, especially these days. You oughtn't to have taken him seriously, Ruth."
"I think Peggy is really responsible," remarked Mrs. Wylie, with a rather mischievous smile, for Mr. Wylie's admiration for his son's fiancée was as outspoken as Graham's own.
"Is that so, Ruth?"
Ruth nodded.
"Then all I can say," declared Mr. Wylie, pushing back his chair from the table, "is that in this matter my future daughter-in-law showed less than her usual good horse-sense."
"I'm beginning to understand something that always puzzled me," Peggy wrote Graham, that same evening. "You know in mathematics they talk about an asymptote, something that something else is always approaching, but never reaches. That always seemed so foolish to me, to approach a thing continually and never get there. But now I understand. Thursday is an asymptote."
But though Thursday loitered on the way, it arrived at last, and four girls woke to the realization that it was supremely important—the day that either made void or confirmed the success of the previous six. They spent the morning characteristically. Ruth, who had felt under the weather for a day or two, decided to stay in bed, this being a safe refuge. Priscilla took a basket of mending and retired to her room. Peggy spent her time at her writing desk and tried to collect some fugitive ideas into a theme for her college English work in the fall. Amy devoted herself to making a cake with a very thick chocolate frosting.
It happened that this morning Amy had received a postcard from Aunt Phoebe, the first reply to her daily bulletins. "Glad to hear you are getting on so well," wrote the old lady. "P—— quite nervous." After the cake was finished and the frosting hardening, Amy resolved to take Aunt Phoebe's card over to Peggy. While they could not talk it over, they could exchange smiles, and probably a few ideas as well, through the medium of a lead pencil. The luckless Amy picked up the post card and started off in high spirits.
It happened that one of the houses on the Terrace had been built with a slate roof, which at the present time was undergoing repairs. Amy, swinging lightly along the familiar way, gained rapidly on an old man ahead who walked very deliberately, apparently examining the numbers of the houses. Amy noticed that, although the sky was clear, he carried a massive cotton umbrella.
The old gentleman was just opposite the house which was being repaired, when one of the workmen pulled out a broken slate and without even looking behind him, flung it to the street below. Amy saw the workman before the slate left his hand, and some intuition warned her of danger. "Look out!" she cried shrilly, "Look out!"