The Little Mother examined Phœbe’s wardrobe and selected a simple, white gown. It needed mending in places, but Judith caught up the rents with her deft needle and added some pretty ribbons of her own to the costume. A season of dressmaking had already begun in the house, but Sue and Becky were most in need of respectable raiment, and so Phœbe’s turn had not yet arrived.
When, late in the afternoon, Miss Eliot and Phœbe Daring set out to make their call, there was nothing that the most critical could find fault with in their personal appearance. Phœbe had the reputation of being “the prettiest girl in Riverdale,” and seemed justly entitled to it that day, while Cousin Judith’s sweet face was sure to win approval anywhere.
Mrs. Randolph and her daughter Marion received their neighbors very graciously. The former was a languid, weary looking woman who had secluded herself in this little village in order to escape the demands of society and organized charities, which had nearly reduced her to a state of nervous prostration. Marion was an intelligent, active girl, with none of her younger sister’s assumption of airs and graces. She seemed to Phœbe to be perfectly frank and natural in her ways, possessing ideas that were healthy, broad and progressive. During the interview, Marion developed a liking for Phœbe that pleased Miss Eliot greatly.
“Come and see me,” said Phœbe, shyly, when about to depart. “We are such near neighbors that you can run in at any time.”
“I will, indeed,” was the ready promise, and Marion kept it faithfully.
Thereafter, there was seldom a day when the two girls were not together. Marion came most frequently to see Phœbe, for there was a certain air of conventional stiffness about the great house that both the girls felt and objected to. Sometimes, Doris came with her sister, and was turned over to the tender mercies of mischievous Becky, who teased her visitor in a shameful manner. Usually Doris was all unaware that she was being ridiculed for her primness and stilted expressions, but Cousin Judith was quick to comprehend the situation and took Becky to task for her impoliteness. With all her graceless ways the child was warm-hearted and easily influenced, for good as well as for evil, and she promised the Little Mother to treat Doris nicely and avoid offending her ears by using slangy expressions. Becky intended to keep her word thus given, but at times lapsed irrepressibly into the old ways, so that she was a source of constant anxiety to Judith.
Since Phœbe had chosen to make a friend of Marion, her twin was bound to follow her lead. Phil found the college girl a delightful comrade. He did not care much for girls, as a rule, excepting of course his own sisters, but Marion proved as frank and as keenly intelligent as any boy. She knew all about modern athletics, although too frail of physique to indulge in such sports herself. Likewise she had a fairly practical knowledge of business methods, politics, public institutions and reform movements, and talked well and interestingly upon all subjects of the day. Aspiring to become a poet, she read bits of original verse to her new friends which they considered so remarkable that it was a marvel to them she was not already famous.
“There is only one thing lacking about Marion,” Phil confided to his twin; “she lacks any sense of humor. Seems to me she can’t appreciate anything funny, at all. The only things she laughs at are the mistakes of other people. Isn’t it queer, when she’s so bright in all other ways?”
“I think,” returned Phœbe, musingly, “that is a characteristic of all the Randolphs. Doris and Allerton are the same way, and I’ve wondered if Mrs. Randolph was ever in her life amused enough to laugh aloud.”
“Marion is good company, though,” added Phil, “and I like her.”