"Oh, do be careful, please, Goat!" cried Colney Hatch. "Don't sit down on that frog, he isn't dry! Dear me! do you—do want anything, girls?"
"We want your room, my love; and your company!" replied Grace. "Yet we are merciful. Here!"
She twirled Cornelia's chair around, and set her with her face to the wall; then moved the lamp so that its light fell on the board in her lap.
"There!" she said. "Finish him, poor old dear, and we'll wake you up when supper's ready. Now then! who's brought what?"
Then, from pockets, from surplice folds, from shawls and cloaks hung carelessly over the arm, came forth a strange array of articles. One had brought a chicken, one a cake. Here was a Dutch cheese, a tin of crackers, a bottle of coffee, a bottle of olives, and a box of sardines. Grace herself told in high glee how she had met one of the teachers in the corridor, and had stood for five minutes talking about the next day's lesson. "And with this under me cloak the while!" and with a dramatic gesture she produced and held out a dish of lobster salad.
"If it had been potato," she declared, "I had been lost; the onion had betrayed me. Blessings on the bland, the seductive mayonnaise, which veiled the ardent lobster and his smell. She did smell it, however, and said, so cheerfully, poor dear, that Miss Carey was evidently going to give us a surprise to-morrow, for she smelt lobster. It was Miss Cortlandt, too; I did want to say, 'Oh, come along, and have some!' She is a rectangular fragment of baked clay, used for building purposes, Miss Cortlandt is."
"What do you mean, Goat?" asked some one.
"I never use slang, as you know!" replied Grace, gravely. "It argues a poverty of intellect, as well as a small vocabulary. I suppose you would have said she was a brick, my child."
"Oh, Goat, how funny you are!" giggled the girls.
"Not at all, I assure you," said Grace, unmoved. "But I pray you fall to! Have some salad, Vanity? yes, I'll take a wing, thank you."