“He said we’d have a trying time, Florimel,” replied Mark, laughing at her. “He’d try me and I’d try him, and if the trial proved me competent, he’d take me into his tent and be content; but if trying me proved too trying he’d not try to try me any longer!”
“For pity’s sake!” cried Florimel, shaking Mark’s arm. “My head feels like a snarl of wool! What do you mean, anyhow? What did Mr. Moulton say, Mary?”
“Mark is going to help him, Mel,” said Mary. “I’m sure it is going to be the best thing that ever happened; I’m as happy as I can be about it. Did you know you had torn your skirt, dear? And it’s a new one.”
“I rolled over on it, Mary, too tight—I mean the skirt was pulled down under me tight when I fell over. I was sitting on my heels, weeding. And Chum thought it was a joke and ran over to bite and yank me, so I kicked out, quite hard, I suppose, because I heard that tearing, crashing sound that you read about in stories of ships striking icebergs, and when I looked——” Florimel ended her account of the disaster with a dramatic gesture downward.
“Make her mend it herself, Mary, and then wear it; she tears everything, and you mend and mend for her, and never scold her!” said Jane, frowning because Mary smiled when she should have frowned at careless Florimel.
“Certainly I shall mend it!” said Florimel, who had never been known to repair anything she had torn. “When I went with you to call on your friend, Miss Aldine, Jane, I decided to begin to mend the very first time anything happened to me! Then if Mary were sick I could mend for you, when you went on the stage, if that sloppy lot were the way you’d have to be. It was what Mrs. Moulton calls an object lesson to me.”
Jane coloured with annoyance over this allusion, but could not help laughing at the look Florimel gave her out of her dancing black eyes, her rosy face pulled down to severity as she spoke.
“It’s a precious good thing I let you go with me, Miss, if it was an object lesson and makes you spare poor Mary some of your mending,” she retorted. “There’s the telephone; I’ll answer it.”
At the end of the hall Jane took down the receiver and they heard her say: “Yes. No, it’s Jane. Oh, Mr. Moulton, I didn’t know your voice. How funny it sounds. Have you a cold? That’s good, but your voice sounds husky and queer, as if it didn’t work right. Yes, sir; we’re all here. You’ll be over in about an hour? All right, Mr. Moulton; good-bye. They’re coming over, Mr. and Mrs. Moulton,” Jane said, rejoining her sisters. “He says he has something most important and unexpected to tell us. He sounded so queer! If it had been one of us I’d have said he was excited.”
“No, you wouldn’t,” observed Mark. “You’d say she was excited.”