"Oh! Oh! That's a secret sign you made," cried Tibby.
"Well, maybe it is," answered Gyp, putting her spoon in her soup with assumed indifference.
"Some silly girls' society, I'll bet," put in Graham with a tormenting grin.
Gyp had passed beyond the age when Graham's teasing could disturb her. She smiled to show how little she minded his words.
"You'll know, my dear brother, sometime, whether we're silly or not," she answered with beautiful dignity. "We're not a society that's organized just for fun!" Which was, of course, a slap at the Sphinxes. Isobel roused suddenly to an active interest in the discussion.
"You're just copy-cats," she declared, with a withering scorn that brought Graham to Gyp's defence.
No wonder Jerry never found a moment in the Westley home dull!
"You needn't think," he shot across the table at Isobel, "that 'cause you have waves in your hair you're the whole ocean!"
"Funny little boy," Isobel retorted, trying hard to hold back her anger. "Mother, I should think you'd make Graham stop using his horrid slang!"
"That's not slang—that's idiotmatic English," added Graham, smiling mischievously at his mother. He chuckled. "You should have heard Don Blacke in geom. class to-day. He got up and said: 'Two triangles are equal if two sides and the included angle of one are equal respectfully to two sides,' and when we all laughed he got sore as a cat!"