“Don’t mind them,” answered Hilda. “Wrinkled clothes are a seaside fad, you know. If you have none you will be suspected of being the Press Club Trust. That’s a clothing club—not literary.”
With other pleasantries the two sets parted, but not until all sorts of invitations to come and visit had been extended and accepted.
“What nice girls,” the timid Marita remarked as the fashionable ones turned into the lane. “Isn’t Hilda pretty? Are they from Chelton?”
“She is and they are,” answered Cora. “But I do not see how we are going to that hop. The boys were going to take us out in a sail boat, you know.”
“Oh, I would be frightened to death in a sail boat,” objected Lottie.
“And perfectly safe in a canoe,” observed Belle. “Charlotte, that is scarcely understandable.”
“Well,” said Lottie, turning a deeper shade of pink, “I am afraid of that big pole in a sail boat. It looks as if it would sweep one’s head off every time it veers around.”
“Just duck,” advised Belle. “It’s a great teacher of the proper mode of ducking; and that is not to be despised, Lottie, whether one has to duck harsh words, or big poles. But I want to go sailing. I can’t see what fun there is in going into a stuffy hotel on a beautiful moonlight evening when we can go out on the water and see something.”
“Don’t you think we would see something in the Cliff ball room?” challenged Lottie.
“Peace!” called Cora, good-naturedly. “It looks as if we might have to take a vote on the question. But I can’t say that the boys would be willing to accept a negative answer.”