89He was a sight for the gods when he finally remounted. But he carried it off with a dash, assuming various kittenish airs and coquetries, even waving saucily at two cowboys who passed them and turned to stare in bewilderment at his bizarre costume.
The ride home passed quickly with all this fun. Gertie cheered up and enjoyed the prairie sights as much as the others. Gertie seemed the same little girl of three years before except for her added inches, but Katy had many little grown-up airs and graces and evidently felt the importance of her fourteen years.
“Almost fifteen,” she answered Dr. Morton when he inquired her age. The two girls were dressed alike still, but Katy managed in some subtle way to give her clothes a different air from Gertie’s. “I don’t know just what the difference is,” Marian remarked to Alice a day or two after their coming, “but Katy is stylish and Gertie demurely sweet in the self-same dress.”
“Personality will out, even in children,” Alice replied. “They are both unusually bright and well brought up, but Katy is ambitious and likes to cut a bit of a dash, and Gertie doesn’t. She is a home and mother girl. I am amazed that she screwed up her courage to come so far without her mother. I fear she is already a trifle homesick, though she 90is enjoying every minute, and is enchanted with the chickens and pups and all this outdoor life.”
Chicken Little found out these things more gradually. On the long ride home from the station they chattered busily. All three felt a little shy for the first minutes but there was so much to tell. Katy had finished her freshman year in the High School and spun great tales of their doings. Carol had graduated the week before.
“He is awfully handsome, Chicken Little. All the girls are mashed on him.”
“Are what, Katy?” demanded Alice who had been listening to Dick and Dr. Morton with one ear open for the girl’s confidences. She felt rather responsible to Mrs. Halford for Katy and Gertie.
Katy colored. “I don’t care, Alice, that’s what all the girls say, and I can’t be goody-goody and proper all the time.”
“All right, Katy, if you think Mother likes that kind of slang, I don’t mind.”
Katy didn’t say anything further to Alice, but when she resumed her story to Jane, she said: “Well, I don’t care what you call it, but they all are! And he just smiles in that lazy way of his and doesn’t put himself out for anybody. He didn’t even take a girl to the senior party, and lots of the Senior girls had to go in a bunch because they didn’t have an escort.”