"He didn't think she was 'dear'" pouted Blue. "He told us she was 'real horrid.'"
Sophia read on from the crumpled sheet with merciless distinctness.
"Come to think of it, when I was coming off I threw all my bills and letters and things down in a heap in the back kitchen at Harmon's; and there were some letters there that those 'cute little Rexford girls wrote to me. They were real spoony on me, but I wasn't spoony on them one bit, Eliza, at least, not in my heart, which having been given to you, remained yours intact; but I sort of feel a qualm to think how their respected pa would jaw them if those billets-doux were found and handed over. You can get in at the kitchen window quite easy by slipping the bolt with a knife; so as I know you have a hankering after the Rexfords, I give you this chance to crib those letters if you like. They are folded small because they had to be put in a nick in a tree, called by those amiable young ladies, a post-office."
"I'm real sorry I made you cry, Eliza. It's as well I didn't remain or I might have begun admiring of you again, which might have ended in breaking my vow to be—Only your ex-admirer, CYRIL, P. H——."
"Oh!" cried Blue, her tears dried by the fire of injury, "we never talked to him except when he talked to us—never!"
"There's a postscript," said Sophia, and then she read it.
"P.S. They used to cock their eyes at me when they saw me over the fence. You had better tell them not to do it; I could not bear to think of them doing it to anyone else."
"Oh!" cried Red, "Oh—h! he never said to us that we cocked our eyes. He said once to Blue that the way she curled her eyelashes at him was real captivating."
Sophia rose delivering her final word: "Nothing could be more utterly vulgar than to flirt with a young man who is beneath you in station just because he happens to be thrown in your way."