Brenda, Her School and Her Club

by Helen Leah Reed

"Oh, you know what I mean, Nora; mark my words there is something queer about the whole thing."

"How in the world, I wonder, did Madame Du Launy happen to know about the Bazaar?" asked Frances Pounder.

"Why, Frances Pounder, where have you been?" cried Nora.

"Why, yes, Frances Pounder, where have you been?" echoed Belle. "Haven't you heard of the tremendous intimacy that has sprung up between Julia and Madame Du Launy since she rescued her little Fidessa from the park police? It really is a wonderful story, and we all expect Julia to be the old lady's heir."

"Come, come," interrupted Nora, "we can't afford to waste our time gossiping; we should be thankful that Madame Du Launy ventured to come here at all, for she bought any number of things, and paid good prices, and now if we do not return to our tables, we may lose all the patronage of the other old ladies who are wandering about."

So two by two the little crowd dispersed. Some of the girls went behind the tables, while others hovered about, picking and choosing what they should buy according to their purses or their taste.

But to tell all the happenings of that afternoon and evening would take a longer time than can be spared to it now. In the evening not only the fathers and uncles of many of the girls came upon the scene, but Philip and his friends appeared to form a small army of purchasers. The latter were not on the whole inclined to buy very expensive things, though they patronized the refreshment table so steadily that Belle had to beg one of the New York boys to become assistant cashier. They also almost swept the flower booth clean of cut flowers and plants, to the loss of the little patients in the children's hospital, who might otherwise have been benefited, had any flowers been left over. Yet although I say that they did not buy a great deal I must not be misunderstood. They did carry off all kinds of little things that they thought would raise a laugh in their college rooms. Philip, for example, bought a work-basket, lined with pink and white silk, grumbling as he did so that this was the nearest approach he could find to crimson. Besides that he paid a good price for the doll which he had admired, and which Nora had mischievously reserved for him by pinning to it a card bearing his name. He also bought a small hammock of twisted ribbons, in which he said he intended to suspend the doll in a conspicuous place over his mantelpiece.

Tom Hurst had to buy two or three tobacco pouches, and in addition he chose a rattle, the covering of which Nora had knitted and decorated with bells.

"Pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw,"

quoted Nora, as he carried away his purchase, at the same time presenting him with a wisp of straws from a broom, which she had tied together with a piece of crimson ribbon. "To be forever cherished," responded Tom, as he walked off with his trophies, in a tone that made the usually unsentimental Nora blush.