“I won’t have you talk about my friends,” Barbara was laughing but not willing to understand the boy as he wanted her to.
“And you love them too, don’t you?” Dudley could play her evasion game quite as well as she could do it herself.
“Why, of course I like the girls!” she flung back with so much fervor that any one could see she was fearing a suspicion. She didn’t want Dudley to think she was so unsocial as not to care for her new companions.
The boy continued to tease. He brought up the subject of her preference for Glenn Gaynor.
“Glenn’s more to your taste, I guess,” he remarked with assumed indifference. “He knows something; girls are mostly dumb-bells.”
“Now Dudley, you don’t want to scrap, do you? I told you I liked the girls.” Certainly as a boy he was frank.
“Well, anyhow,” he drawled. “I’m awfully glad you came, for I don’t like them—all.”
There was neither any use for nor time for further arguments. They were rolling down the drive, and the girls waiting for them were squealing things about Babs being mean to stay away, and the whole thing looking like a put-up job, so they managed to make known.
Barbara expected all this, for indeed it did look queer for her to have been away from the girls practically all the afternoon. But Cara made peace by hastily managing to get all the other girls, excluding Barbara, into the little car. Two were assigned to the front seat with Dud, and three in the rumble seat. Then she made Dudley give them a ride.
“Anywhere,” she urged. “Just for a ride,” and the brother understood that she was trying to please the girls by having him “show them off around town.”