"Yes, isn't it? But I think she stayed purposely. Now, you—she says you're an exception; that there can't be many like you. You see, Madge has a standard of her own; she says she'd be ashamed to go through college the way some of the boys do, with just a good time and as low marks as they can safely get. She says she'd want to be a student if she pretended to, and yet she must have a good time, and—"
"And she thinks it can't be done? Dear me, what an error! Well, if she'll come up I'll be very glad to have her, I'm sure. I can trot out our little pastimes and er—omit the more sociological side," said Anne, with a grin.
Mrs. Harte leaned forward eagerly. "Yes, that's just what I mean! She got enough of that from Georgiana. I want her to watch you—"
"Sport about on the lawn? Gambol through the village? 'Make the picturesque little lake echo with sweet girlish gayety,' as the newspaper gentlemen say?"
"Yes, that's it," and Mrs. Harte patted Anne's broad shoulder. "That's what I mean, you silly child. Just let her see that there are a few diversions!"
Miss Marjory Cunningham, who was just then coming up from the lake, was a tall, well-grown young woman of seventeen, with a handsome, assured face and unexceptionable garments. She looked fully twenty, and was young enough to find satisfaction in this circumstance. She had been brought up, in the orthodox American fashion, to take a prominent part in the household, particularly in the entertainment of her mother's many guests; and this, added to the fact that she happened to be much cleverer than the young women with whom her social lot had hitherto been cast, inclined her to regard any one under thirty with a patronage somewhat offensive, if mild.
She dropped down beside Anne as her aunt left the broad piazza, and smiled politely.
"Aunt Frank says you're going to-morrow," she remarked, adding a little curiously, "Shall you be glad to get back?"
"East, you mean? Why, yes. You see I'm a week late. They've started up the show without me, so to speak, and naturally it's rather hard for them to worry along. They may have given me up and laid my new little single room at Lucilla Bradford's feet, which would more than trouble me."
"Do they allow you to come back whenever you want to?"