She was prepared for any answer but the one forthcoming.
"Why, I don't care," said Evangeline, indifferently, "only she'd better hurry, hadn't she?"
Biscuits was by now so impressed with the vital necessity of getting Suzanne that she had hardly time to wonder at her haste or her nervous fear that the young lady might not be at home. She trudged up the two flights and sighed with relief at the sound of Suzanne's mandolin. Miss Endicott was not fond of the mandolin and played it solely for the purpose of annoying the senior next door, who had a nasty habit of rising early to study, and making her bed violently, driving it into the wall just opposite Suzanne's pillow. When remonstrated with she returned with calmness that she had not been accustomed, when herself a sophomore, to object to the habits of seniors, and that excitable young people who came to college for heaven knew what, had better acquaint themselves with habits of study in others, since that was their only probable source of knowledge of such habits.
Henceforth it became at once Suzanne's duty and pleasure to give what she modestly called "little recitals from time to time," accompanied by her mandolin, which instrument maddened her neighbor beyond endurance. As Biscuits entered she was giving a very dramatic rendering of the Jewel Song from Faust, and to her guest's opening remarks she replied only by a melodious burst of laughter and the arch assurance:
"Non, non! Ce n'est plus toi!
Ce n'est plus ton visage!"
Biscuits obeyed an imperative gesture and held her peace till the song was over, when the performer, with an inimitable grin at the wall, laid down her mandolin and pointed to a chair.
"Que voulez-vous, ma plus chère? Vous avez l'air—"
"Oh, for heaven's sake talk English, Suzanne! I want you to come over and cut out Evangeline Potts' evening dress. Will you? She's freckled and big, and she won't go unless you do. She's got to go, too. We can't leave anybody out. Will you come?"
"Mais qu'avez-vous donc, ma chère Berthe? Est-ce que j'suis couturière, moi?"