“If you do, Sidney will never get over it. I’ll tell you. You let me invite Shirley and have her part of the time. Then when you are not in anything with the Double Three, or entertaining them yourself, she can be with you.”
“If I have a party,” said Hope, with determination, “if I have a party,” she repeated, “and Shirley is in Chicago, she will be invited. Sidney can have a headache if she does not want to come!”
“Well, then, may I have Shirley?”
“Yes, on those conditions, that I have her part of the time, to stay all night, you know.”
“All right. We’ll not quarrel, Hope. Shirley is such a big-hearted and broad-minded girl, like yourself, Hope, that I couldn’t be jealous of either of you if I tried.”
“That is because you are nice yourself, Cad, my dear.”
All of this was not imparted to Shirley. But she knew that she was invited by both Caroline and Hope, and after a letter of permission from her great-aunt, Miss Dudley, she accepted her invitations very happily. When she heard that the Double Three were having a house party at Sidney’s, she wondered about how things would be managed; for she “felt it in her bones” that Sidney would not invite her to her home, and she knew that Hope was a “Double Three.” But Shirley said nothing. That could be handled by her hostesses, she knew. She would go and have a wonderful time.
It had happened that Sidney’s parents had not driven to the school that fall. It was Sidney’s second year. They were accustomed to the separation as well as she. She spent one or two week ends in Chicago, as well as the Thanksgiving vacation. Early in the year, also, Sidney had asked Hope and Caroline not to speak of the strange resemblance between Sidney and the then “new girl.” “If you write home about it, Father and Mother will hear of it, and it will not strike them very pleasantly I am sure,” said Sidney. And after some consideration Hope and Caroline had promised, though Caroline had said, “We’ll not say anything now, shall we, Hope? But if our parents ever do see Shirley or hear about her, don’t flatter yourself, Sid, that we can muzzle our fathers. Our mothers might hesitate to say anything, but if I know Dad, he would be just as likely as not to mention it.”
“I suppose he would,” said Sidney, with a look and tone that made Caroline want to resort to “primitive measures,” she told Hope. “If we had been about six years old, Hope,” she said, “I would have slapped Sidney Thorne and not regretted it.”
“Tut-tut, Caroline,” laughed Hope. “It’s a primitive society, indeed, that can’t control its angry passions.”