“But aren’t you going anywhere?” asked Robbie Belle who had been filling Berta’s plate and pouring her milk during the discourse.
Bea sent a bewitching smile straight into Berta’s eyes. “I’m ’most sure she is going to give me a swimming lesson at half past four. Then if it is still raining this evening, we can all swim over to the chapel for the concert. Please, Berta.”
“All right,” acquiesced Berta carelessly. “I will do it because I am so noble and you are a literary person, though how in this world of incomprehensibilities you managed to get elected to that editorial board passes my powers of apperception. Robbie, will you be so kind as to reach me that saltcellar?”
“You ought to say, ‘Salt!’ at the beginning, and then while you are putting in the rest of the words, she can be handing it over,” advised Bea; “ah, what was the thought I was about to think?”
She paused in dispensing the main dish and rolled up her eyes vacantly for a moment before she dropped the spoon without a glance at the cloth to see if it left a stain and rising walked dreamily out of the dining-room.
The other girls stared. Robbie looked alarmed till Gertrude caught the likeness and explained: “It’s ‘sincerest flattery’ for you, Berta. Imitation, you understand. When an idea strikes you, you drop everything and wander away while Robbie or Bea picks up the spoon and goes on ladling out the stuff in the dish at your place. What a monkey!”
“No, a missionary,” corrected Berta, her eyes and mouth contradicting each other as usual. This time her eyes tried to hide a troubled spark in their depths while her mouth twitched over the joke of it all. “She is posing as an awful example.”
“Here I am again!” Bea appeared suddenly in her seat. “I find I’m considerably hungry still,” she vouchsafed in response to a chorus of taunts and jeers. “Ideas aren’t filling, so to speak. At least, mine aren’t—and they most of them belong to other people; hence I infer that other people’s aren’t either. Is that plain, my dear young and giddy friends? Now, somebody, applesauce!” she called, and added politely, “please pass it.”
Berta regarded her sternly. “Beatrice Leigh, you are running this scheme pretty far into the ground. When you reach bed-rock, something is likely to get a bump. Take care! Remember!”
“Thank you, yes, Berta. Half-past four at the swimming-tank in the gymnasium. I’ll be there. Trust me!”