“I shouldn’t wonder,” said Winona. “I was playing tag there with my sister Florence and little Bessie Williams.”
“Do you still play tag?” asked Nataly, gesturing her visitor to a seat, and lifting one weary eyebrow.
“Not as a confirmed habit,” said Winona mischievously. “But you can’t play it well with only two, and the children wanted me to, so—well, I just did, that was all. Don’t you like tag?” she added. (“I was morally certain she’d faint,” she confided to Tom afterwards, “but she didn’t.”)
As a matter of fact, Nataly pulled closer the blue brocaded negligee that was obviously covering up a nightgown, and said, “I don’t know much about games. I like reading better.”
“Oh, do you?” exclaimed Winona, interested at once. “I love reading, too, but somehow there’s so little time for it except when it’s bad weather. Don’t you do anything but read?”
“Not much,” replied Nataly languidly. “Sports bore me.”
Winona gave an inward gasp of dismay.
“Mercy!” she thought, “what a queer girl!” But outwardly she persevered. “Don’t you ever dance?”
Nataly opened her heavy hazel eyes with a little more interest.
“Oh, yes, I dance, of course.”