“You mean that curly-haired clerk who wears the ruby scarf pin?” laughed Billie. “What’s his name?”
“Delosia Moxley,” answered Elinor. “He is always giving Nancy pointers about the latest modes. He was responsible for that Spanish veil she would wear last winter——”
“He was not,” interrupted Nancy. “He merely told me they were the fashion in New York. I needn’t have bought it if I hadn’t wanted to.”
“I suppose he furnished that French lady’s Alpine costume, too, didn’t he, Nancy Bell?”
Nancy smiled good-naturedly. She never really minded being teased about her elaborate taste in dress.
“His taste is extremely good,” she said. “He expects to run a millinery shop in a year or so. He says he can trim hats charmingly.”
“My word!” exclaimed Billie. “I suppose his mother will make your suit and he’ll pin the feather on the hat, and between them they will equip you to climb the Adirondacks. But, oh, Nancy, I implore you to explain to Mrs. Moxley that hobbles don’t go in the mountains.”
“She understands,” replied Nancy with much dignity. “She is going to make me the very latest thing in mountain-climbing suits, and she gets all her fashions straight from New York.”
Her friends exchanged covert glances and said nothing. Nancy’s conferences with Mrs. Moxley, the dressmaker, were a source of endless amusement to them. It was Mrs. Moxley who had made Nancy’s graduating costume that June, and never had been seen on the platform of West Haven High School such a fashionable toilette. It had a hobble skirt and a fancy little train that flopped about Nancy’s feet like a beaver’s tail, and at the reception afterwards the boys had teased her until she left in tears.
Two weeks had passed since graduation and our Motor Maids were just beginning to feel the results of their hard winter’s work. It had been a tough pull to catch up with their classes after the return from Japan. There had been no gayeties for them during the Christmas holidays, only continuous hard study, and for weeks afterwards Billie and Nancy and Elinor were tutored every afternoon. Mary Price, the best student of the three, had outstripped them, and in the end had carried off first honors and a scholarship besides. But after the excitement of finals, the four friends had collapsed like pricked balloons. Billie, mortified at what she considered a weakness in her character, had not been able to throw off a deep cold contracted in the spring. Mary Price was limp and white; Elinor had grown mortally thin, and even Nancy had lost her roundness, and her usually plump face was peaked and pale.