“If the Ringold’s cook, as Belle says, has a Sunday dress just like this I’ll never want to wear it again. Not because her cook isn’t just as good as I am,” Jessie added quickly, as she chanced to see the expression on her chum’s face, “but because Momsy bought the goods and had it made up by her own dressmaker, and it is supposed to be a little different from what you get in the ready-to-wear shops.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Amy urged. “Belle’s talk isn’t as bad as the measles, or some other fell disease. Come on. If we catch the concert at four we’ll hear Madame Elva; and you know she is the very best on the Stratford Electric Company’s program.”
The two Roselawn girls were walking up the boulevard from town on this July afternoon. The wide highway was speckled with broken bits of sunshine, patterned through the leaves of the tall elms. Now and then an automobile purred past the girls on one of the two oiled drives, or a horseman clattered by. Roselawn was distinctly the better suburban district of New Melford.
“We could have such nice times in our set,” sighed Jessie, after a long minute, “if it wasn’t for Belle Ringold and Sally Moon and their crowd. They are forever interfering.”
“Static?” suggested Amy, grinning.
“No ether interference was ever as bad as Belle and Sally. See how they are annoying the boys about that moonlight box-party they have been trying to arrange for two weeks.”
“The present moon will be quite worn out before they get around to the party,” laughed Amy. “And, anyway, Darry and Burd have gone down to Barnegat to put the Marigold in commission again. If Belle holds off her moonlight party until they get back she’ll wait till frost.”
“Oh! You don’t mean that the boys will stay away all summer, Amy?” cried her chum.
“No,” rejoined Amy demurely. “I meant it will be a frost for Belle and Sally. Darry positively refuses to be roped in by Belle and her crowd.”
“I never did feel like this about any other girl,” Jessie Norwood confessed. “But I don’t really believe there ever was such an unpleasant girl as Belle Ringold.”