"What a dear good old sentimental soul she is!" thought the girl. "I'll bet a cent she is asking pa to put up a dormitory for boys on the other side of the campus!"
Mrs. Bates presently carried Jane and her mother into the library, leaving the men behind to contemplate a litter of disordered wineglasses and dishevelled napkins, and to smoke themselves out, in the course of half an hour, to the women.
Mrs. Bates's talk, here as heretofore, was frankly personal. On a previous occasion she had talked to Rosy's mother about Rosy; now she exacted that Rosy's mother should talk to her about her own boy Billy.
"The best boy in the world; his father says he's making a splendid business man." She took a cabinet photograph from over the fireplace. "There; this is the latest, but it doesn't do him any kind of justice."
"Well, he's got a real good face," said Eliza Marshall.
"And a real good-looking face, too," rejoined his mother, quickly. "Jane, dear, run up to my room and get the one before this—that's something like; second drawer on the left. And stop eying those books; you can't get at them with anything less than a cold-chisel!
"But why should you depend on pictures?" Mrs. Bates observed, presently. "See the boy yourself. Go down-stairs next time he calls. Oh, he will call again, I assure you," concluded Susan Bates, archly.
"Tell him to inquire for ma, and send in a card for her, too," whispered
Jane. "Rosy's getting awfully sticky."
"'Sticky'?"
"Yes; fussy, stiff, critical—that's what it means, as near as I can make out. It's a word Dick brought home from London."