“She will probably stop for us. You can’t lose Muriel.” Marjorie was still smiling over Jerry’s disrespectful name for the manager. “For goodness’ sake, Jerry, be careful about calling her that. Don’t let it go further than among the Five Travelers. We understand that it is just your funny self. If some outsider heard it and you tried to explain yourself—well, you couldn’t.”
“I know that all too well, dear old Mentor. I’ll be careful. Don’t worry about me, as little Charlie Stevens says after he has run away and Gray Gables has been turned upside down hunting him. I presume that is Muriel now.” A decided rapping sent Jerry hurrying to the door. About to make some humorous remark to Muriel concerning her late hasty disappearance, she caught herself in time. Three girls were grouped outside the door but they were not the expected trio of Lookouts.
CHAPTER XII.—UNEXPECTED CALLERS.
“Good evening,” Jerry managed to say politely, amazed though she was at the unlooked-for callers.
“Good evening,” came the prompt response from the foremost girl, spoken in a cool velvety tone that somehow suggested patronage. “Are you Miss Dean?”
“No, I am Miss Macy. Miss Dean is my room-mate. She is here. Will you come in?”
“Thank you.” The caller stepped into the room, her two companions at her heels. She was a young woman of about the same height as Marjorie and not unlike her in coloring, save that her eyes were a bluish gray, shaded by long dark lashes, her eyebrows heavily marked. Her hair, a paler brown than Marjorie’s, suggested in arrangement a hairdresser’s art rather than that of natural beauty, pleasing though the coiffure was. Her frock of pale pink and white effects in silk net and taffeta was cut short enough of sleeve and low enough of neck to permit the white shapeliness of her arms and shoulders to be seen. While her features might be called regular, a close observer would have pronounced her mouth, in repose, a shade too small for the size of her face, and her chin a trifle too pointed.
Standing as she was where the electric lights, which Jerry had recently switched on, played upon her, she made an undeniably attractive picture. Marjorie recognized her instantly as the girl she had seen driving the gray car. One of her companions was a small, dark girl with very black eyes and a sulky mouth. She was wearing a gown of Nile green pongee, heavily trimmed with expensive ecru lace. It gave her the appearance of being actually weighed down. The third of the callers Marjorie took an instant dislike toward. She represented a type of girl that Marjorie had rarely seen and never encountered at Sanford High School.
While her companions were attired in evening frocks, she was wearing a sports suit of a white woolly material that was a marvel as to cut and finish. The white silk velour sports hat, the heavy white silk stockings and fine, stitched buckskin ties that completed her costume were the acme of distinctive expense. Despite her carefully chosen apparel, she was very near to possessing an ugliness of face and feature which no amount of smart clothes could mitigate. Her hair, such as could be seen of it from under her hat, was coarse and black. Small, shrewd brown eyes, which had a trick of half closing, high cheek bones, a rather retroussé nose and a large, loose-lipped mouth completed an outer personality that Marjorie found unprepossessing in the extreme. Last of the three to enter the room, she had closed the door and now stood almost lounging against it, eyeing Marjorie with a smile that suggested bored tolerance.
“I am Marjorie Dean.” Immediately she heard her name, Marjorie had come forward. She guessed that the girl of the gray car had come to offer an apology for her non-appearance. Memory furnishing her with the spokesman’s name, she held out her hand courteously, saying: “Your are Miss Weyman, are you not? Won’t you and your friends sit down?”