Jean tried not to look cross. “Look here, girls, what do you want with us?” she demanded. “You know it isn’t fair to come interrupting a fellow at his labors, and Miss Winthrop——”
“Oh, Miss Winthrop be—any old thing,” Gerry answered saucily. “Do you suppose that when school is nearly over that we care half so much for the views and wishes of our lady principal as we do earlier in the year, when we might have to live on under the shadow of her displeasure? However, on this one occasion the fear of that august personage need not darken our young lives, since she has given her consent to what I am now about to propose. Oh, well, since it is Margaret’s party, I suppose I had best let her extend the actual invitation, while I beg you to accept it beforehand.”
Jean put up two protesting hands, but Frieda showed no such moral hesitancy. “Please don’t ask Frieda and me to do anything agreeable this afternoon,” Jean pleaded, “for we simply can’t accept any invitation, and yet if you ask us we may.”
Margaret Belknap laughed. “Of course you will when you hear what it is. You must get your coats and hats at once and come and drive with us for a mile or so to the nearest landing pier and there father and Cecil will be waiting for us in our yacht to take us for a sail.”
“Oh, my goodness gracious me!” exclaimed Frieda ecstatically, gathering her school paraphernalia into her arms, “and to think that I have never been on a yacht or even a sailboat in my whole life!”
Apparently there was to be no further question of their studies this afternoon, for Jean and Frieda now fairly leaped over the overturned screen in their efforts to get up to their room for hats and coats without delay.
However, but two minutes had passed, a not sufficient time for Jean to have made preparations for the trip, when she was seen slowly returning toward her group of friends.
“Margaret, Gerry,” she begged, “if the other girls will please excuse us, I want to speak to you privately for half a minute.”
Jean’s face was flushed and her manner embarrassed. “Please don’t think I am ungrateful for your invitation, Margaret,” she said softly, “but really I don’t believe I had better go with you this afternoon after all. Frieda says she will go,” and unconsciously the speaker put an added emphasis on the verb will.
Margaret, hurt at her friend’s attitude, did not answer at once, particularly as Gerry hardly gave her the opportunity.