“I tell you what would be delightful to do,” said Mac. They were sitting together on a hall seat at the Hollands, while they waited for Hope, who had gone upstairs after her gloves which were missing. Mac was to drive them to Caroline’s.
“There are other young men who would be interested in being entertained by some charming damsel other than their sisters.” Mac paused and looked meaningly at Shirley. “Why not arrange for Dick with, say, the sister of one of said young men, or one of her other friends?”
“It would be possible, even if Dick came as my guest,” said Shirley, “for me to see something of, well, any of ‘said young men.’”
“How dearly I love my sister, only time will prove,” said Mac, rising and taking hold of Hope on the lowest step. Hope looked suspiciously at her brother, stopping in her descent.
“What now, Malcolm?” she said, severely, but breaking out into her own cheery smile as she looked at the laughing Shirley. “Such displays of affection usually mean something, Shirley,” Hope continued, “but I’ll do almost anything for you, Mac, for taking us around the way you are doing.”
“I am always willing to sacrifice myself for my only sister,” asserted Mac, with a perfectly serious face. But Mac Holland did not keep up his joking about the Prom or indulge in any personal remarks after this, and Shirley liked him all the better when he was his normal self, full of fun, to be sure, but with something better than that about him. He saw that Shirley and his sister heard some of the holiday entertainments that Chicago can supply, quietly taking care of them in a gentlemanly way.
The girls had two weeks’ vacation, which they enjoyed to the full. After Shirley had visited with Caroline, she came back to Hope, yielding to many urgings, for Mr. and Mrs. Holland liked Shirley. There were only a few occasions on which Shirley met people who took her for Sidney Thorne; but Hope repeated a remark that had been made to Mac. “‘I did not know that you knew Sidney Thorne so well, Mac, and went around with her so much,’ somebody said to Mac the other day, Shirley,” said Hope. “And Mac never explained at all!”
It was not until toward the last of her stay in Chicago that Shirley met any one connected with Sidney. As the girls had told Sidney, they could not muzzle their fathers. Mr. Scott, in particular, Caroline made no attempt to caution. Why should she? Sidney might just as well let her father and mother know about the lovely girl that looked like her. It happened, then, that Mr. Scott said to Mr. Thorne, “Odd, Thorne, but my daughter brought home from school a young girl who looks enough like your daughter to be her twin.”
“There are close resemblances sometimes, I suppose,” returned Mr. Thorne, who was preoccupied with the bonds about which he had come to the bank.
“But this isn’t any ordinary close resemblance, Thorne. Did you ever have any relatives named Harcourt?”