Leaving thine outgrown shell,
By life’s unresting sea.”
“Oh, I love that,” Nancy cried, her blue eyes sparkling as Polly finished. “Father would, too.”
“Now, there’s just Bess, and Mrs. Carey, and you left, Nancy,” Kate said. “Come, Bess, do something.”
“Oh, I don’t know anything,” Bess said, shyly.
“Yes, she does, too,” Dorothy laughed. “Make her say the poem from ‘Alice in Wonderland’ about the whiting and the snail.”
All the girls added their persuasion and Bess agreed. She was only thirteen, and small for her age, with a mass of yellow, square-cut curls around her mischievous face, and she had plenty of freckles. The piquant, teasing look on her face was delicious as she asked, plaintively, coaxingly,
“Will you, won’t you, will you, won’t you, won’t you join the dance,
Oh, will you, won’t you, will you, won’t you, won’t you, won’t you join the dance?”
“Now, Mrs. Carey and Nancy are next,” Kate said, as soon as the applause had stopped, and Crullers leaned back on her pillow flushed and radiant over the merriment.