The little group dissolved rapidly and No. 18 resumed its wonted quiet. "There's nothing like having a society girl for a room-mate, is there, Patsy?" said the resident Sutton twin, opening the door. She and her sister were distinguishable by their room-mates alone, and they had been separated with a view to preventing embarrassing confusion, as they were incredibly alike. "Couldn't I make the Alpha on the strength of having vacated this hearth and home eighteen times by actual count for its old committees?"
"I've put you up five times, Kate, love, but they think your hair's too straight. Couldn't you curl it?"
Kate sniffed scornfully. "I've always known that the literary societies had some such system of selection," she said to the bureau. "Now, in an idle moment of relaxation, the secret is out! Patsy, I scorn the Alpha, and the Phi Kappa likewise."
"I scorn the Phi Kappa myself, theoretically," said Patsy.
"Do you think they'll take in that queer junior, you know, that looks so tall till you get close to her, and then it's the way she walks?"
"Dear child, your vivid description somehow fails to bring her to my mind."
"Why don't you want her in Alpha? But be careful you don't wait too long! You're both leaving me till late in the year, you know, and then, ten to one, the other one gets me!"
"A little violet beside a mossy stone is a poor comparison, Katharine, but at the moment I think of no other. I am glad you grasp the situation so clearly, though."
"But, truly, I wonder why they don't take that girl—isn't her name Hastings?—into Phi Kappa? She writes awfully well, they say, and I guess she recites well enough."
The other Sutton twin sauntered in, and appearing as usual to grasp the entire conversation from the beginning, rolled her sister off the couch, filled her vacant place, and entered the discussion.