“I think I ought to have the first chance to tell things, as I am the youngest and have been the farthest away,” Frieda protested.
Of course Jean and Olive were glad enough to give Frieda the first chance, but now as she began to speak, very naturally both of them turned their attention full upon her. It was strange, for of course Frieda had had a wonderful visit—what girl in a southern city fails to have—and yet in spite of all her accounts of dances and dinner parties and germans given for the school girls in Richmond during the holidays, both Jean and Olive noticed that she did not look as cheerful as usual, but that, if it were possible to believe such a thing, a fine line of worry appeared to pucker her brow.
“Frieda Ralston, you have been going too hard and seeing altogether too much of life for such a baby,” Jean insisted when Frieda had triumphantly cast a dozen or more pretty trinkets received as favors at germans at their feet.
But Frieda had only obstinately shaken her head, “I haven’t either, Jean,” she declared, “Mrs. Johnson says it does not hurt girls to have a good time in the holidays if they only study hard and behave themselves properly at school.”
“Well, perhaps you are just tired, Frieda,” Olive suggested.
And again the youngest Miss Ralston disagreed. “I am not tired. Why should you girls think there is anything the matter with me?” And she turned such round, innocent blue eyes on her audience that it became silenced. For five, ten minutes afterwards Frieda continued to hold the floor, and then in the midst of an account of a party given at the Johnson home she had suddenly stopped talking and thrown herself down on the floor, tucking a sofa pillow under her blonde head. “Maybe I am tired to-night on account of the trip home,” she confessed; “anyhow I don’t want to talk any more just now. I suppose, Olive, you haven’t anything special to say, just having stayed here at school with Miss Winthrop. So Jean, you tell us what you did in New York.”
Because Jean took up the conversational gauntlet so promptly, both the older girls failed to notice that before Frieda had even ceased talking her eyes had filled with tears.
The story Jean told of her visits to Gerry and Margaret in New York City was not exactly like Frieda’s, for though Jean was several years older than her cousin, in New York school girls are never allowed the same privileges that they enjoy in the South. But Jean had been to the theatre many times and to luncheons and twice Mrs. Belknap had taken Margaret and Jean and Gerry to the opera in her box. “Yes, Cecil Belknap had been very nice and she had liked him a little better, though she still thought him horribly vain,” Jean confessed, in answer to a leading question from Frieda. Then she, too, abruptly concluded her story. “There is just a weeny thing more I have got to tell everybody when the lights go out,” she concluded, “but I am not willing to tell now.”
Frieda reached out for comfort toward her box of candy, popping a large chocolate into her mouth.
“Now, Olive, you please tell us what you did while we went away like selfish pigs and left you for most two weeks. You must have had a dreadfully dull time!” Frieda suggested indulgently.