“It would be lovely if we could do it,” she said. “When is it to be?”
Billy pulled a little calendar out of the one small and concealed pocket that his clothes allowed him, and studied it.
“A week from to-morrow,” he said. “You have lots of time.”
“Then I’m sure we can do it,” said Winona. “Marie has a canoe she’ll probably want to enter, and besides that surely we can get up a float among us.”
And then something which Louise—so she said afterwards—had been expecting, happened. One of the women who had bought pottery from them that morning came up, and began to talk to Miss Lawrence, quite as if the girls were out of hearing.
“Good-morning,” she began, taking everything in as she talked. “Aren’t these the little Italian vendors that were around this morning? Why, how transformed they look! Really, the younger one looks quite refined. And what are you doing with them, dear Miss Lawrence?”
Her tone added quite plainly, “And won’t they pocket the spoons?”
Louise, the irrepressible, grinned above her salad. “Kinda lady loana da cloes,” she said glibly; and the waiter, who had heard her discoursing in rapid and fluent English of an unmistakably home-grown kind the moment before, got behind a palm. If he hadn’t he would have disgraced himself in a way no well-trained waiter should. Billy, too, dived into his napkin and seemed to have swallowed something down his Sunday throat. But Miss Lawrence remained quite calm.
“I have taken quite a fancy to them,” she said. “They seem like good, industrious girls. I am glad to see you are so interested, too, Mrs. Gardner. The best way to help them—you were going to ask me that, were you not—is to buy their goods. You’ll find them on sale in the little rose-room.”
“Oh—ah, yes indeed!” said Mrs. Gardner, and fled, while the young people regarded Miss Lawrence with admiration.