By this time Jean was at the foot of the front stairs to open the door, and Nan’s quick feet were pattering down the uncarpeted back stairs to the kitchen. The Gordon home was almost like her own.
The last girl to be reached by telephone was the first to arrive. Leigh Dudley and Phoebe Wood stood at the Gordon door, giving bright greetings to Jean’s welcoming words. “Come right in,” she cordially urged. “Isn’t this a March wind, though?”
Leigh was taller than Jean, with a vivid color, almost black hair and dark blue eyes. She slipped out of a handsome fur coat, which Jean took from her and put upon a hanger. Phoebe, little and dark and quick, waited upon herself. A wood fire was burning in the living room fireplace and to this the girls betook themselves, warming cold hands.
As Leigh rubbed her hands together in front of the blaze, she said, “I thought at first that you wanted us for something about the party. Phoebe thought it a birthday party. Do you suppose we ought to give a present?”
“No,” replied Jean. “I know that it is not a birthday celebration. Excuse me,—there come Molly with Bess and Fran. Oh, look at Fran’s new hat. Isn’t it darling?”
With this Jean flew to the hall again, while Leigh and Phoebe looked out of the window to behold the “darling” hat, a very cocky felt affair. Only girls could have told any difference in the style from those of the other girls. “Isn’t it a shame that Fran had to get a new hat this late in the winter?” asked Phoebe.
“Why did she? They’re wearing straw hats now in some places.”
“Why, don’t you know, on the bob-sled last night Fran’s hat got knocked off and Jimmy Standish stepped right into it and through it! Fran managed to fix it up enough to wear to school this morning. Then at noon Fran went and got a wonderful bargain because it is so late.”
More raw breezes entered with the newcomers, who talked about how the snow had turned to slush and how raw the wind was and how Fran would have her hat for “next fall” if the styles didn’t change. Then Nan came in with a plate of fudge, divided into squares and still hot. “Your mother came out and gave me the plate, Jean,” said she.
The girls ate fudge and toasted their toes by the fire. Molly French was a plump, happy looking girl with a way of looking at one and considering a moment before she spoke. “Molly always thinks twice before she speaks,” said the girls sometimes. But then Molly was “the preacher’s” daughter.