“How do you make that out?” inquired Belle.
“Why,” Paul answered, “he had been sailing forty days before he saw ary rat.”
There was a moment of stunned silence.
“Ararat!” Cora at length exclaimed. “Paul, how could you inflict that on us?”
“You ought to be shot at sunrise,” said Bess.
“Now you see, Aunt Betty, what we’ve had to stand on our journey up here,” moaned Cora.
“I must say you seem to have thrived on it,” smiled Aunt Betty, looking at the rosy cheeks and sparkling eyes of the girls.
“Good for Aunt Betty!” cried Walter. “She appreciates us! You girls will too, when you’ve seen a little more of men and realize how we stand out from the common herd.”
“Who was that woman,” asked Bess, turning to Cora, “who said that the more she saw of men the more fond she grew of dogs?”
“Poor, misguided female,” said Paul pityingly. “I suppose she was an inmate of a lunatic asylum.”