“How can we help it if our parents and chaperones do it without our knowledge,” queried Eleanor, innocently.
“Well, I’ll speak to them, then. Ken and I will have to be off again next week; so for the few days we have at home we want you girls to pass up all other fun. You’ve got all the year for other beaux, you know,” grumbled Jim.
Polly and Eleanor laughed. “Oh, yes,” said the latter, “we just keep on the go continually, every afternoon and evening, with a devoted swain each day to replace the ones of the day before.”
“Where do you meet them?” demanded Jim, jealously.
“We-ll—the first one Polly and I snared, we ‘picked up’ at an art sale. But we have many opportunities to meet others, you know.”
“Yes,” added Polly, entering the joke, “at night school, you know, there are loads of young men; and at lectures and exhibitions—and everywhere.”
“Is that why you both are so crazy to go to these dry lecture affairs?” jeered Kenneth, thinking himself very clever, indeed.
But they failed to get the girls to break the engagement with the Ashbys, and Jim barely managed, through his father’s kind auspices, to meet Mr. Dalken Saturday morning, and thus open the way to call on the Ashbys that evening.
Mr. Dalken was young in spirit if not in years, and he enjoyed helping the two boys work out the little plot so as to be present with Polly and Eleanor at the Ashbys, that evening. But the boys never knew that their benefactor passed up an exciting game of chess at his club, that Saturday night, in order to introduce them to his friends.
There were so many wonderful things to do during that Holiday Week, that the girls could not attend them all. Many of their school-friends were eager to have them at teas and parties and matinees, but all these had to be refused with regrets. Eleanor remarked: “Wait for school to open. We’ll be the most popular girls there. In fact, every last girl will want to fag for us!”