“No; I’m anxious to hear what’s happened over there.” Leslie made a backward movement of the head in the direction of the college.
“All right.” Elizabeth gave in, slightly sulky. Soon she forgot to sulk as she weirdly embellished truth for her companion’s gratification.
Leslie listened, calmly sorting out in her own mind the proportion of truth contained in the other’s narrations.
“Oh, I forgot to tell you about yesterday,” Elizabeth declared, when her budget of gossip was exhausted. “I was out driving with a freshie who has an awful crush on me and I nearly ran over Bean and a scrub woman, or servant—anyway an old fossil she was with. They were marching along the middle of the pike near the Carden Estate. I came around the corner pretty fast. I was on my own side of the pike, though. I’m sure of that. I know——”
A sudden deep scowl corrugated Leslie’s forehead. “You are positive you didn’t hit either of them, are you?” she asked in an odd, sharp voice.
“Of course not. Everest, the freshie, said I knocked the old lady down. It scared the silly goose. She grew quite panicky over it. I knew I didn’t come within six feet of either of them. She wanted me to go back. I was too wise to do that.”
“What did this woman look like?” again came the tight, tense tones. “I suppose, though, you couldn’t tell much about her.”
“No, I couldn’t. Evie said she was dressed in black and small.”
“You should have gone back.” Leslie’s loose lips tightened in displeasure. It was easy enough to give advice which she herself had not followed on a similar occasion. “For all you know that woman may have been faculty. Bean’s on very good terms with them.”
“Oh, pshaw! This woman looked old, from the glimpse I caught of her—too old to be faculty. She’d have nothing to report anyway. They had no business on the pike in the very path of machines, coming and going.”