“But we didn’t meet him at all, Fannie,” said Bell; “he overtook us and spoke before he got up to us; that was after we passed him, you know.”
“You seem slightly incoherent,” said Edna. “He passed you and you passed him. And where was Miss Blake all this time? She is not much of a ‘dragon’ if she lets strange young men speak to the girls in the street. My, wouldn’t madame have made short work of that kind of a teacher.”
“Miss Blake is all right,” said Bell, stolidly, unwilling to explain the situation.
Lily laid down her scissors and looked the committee over sharply. “Girls,” she said, “you are keeping back something interesting. Now, make a clean breast of it and tell us the whole story right away. Confess now, unless you want to be handed over for torture.”
Then Fannie, acting as spokesman, told their adventure fully. Their hearers were much amazed that the two steadiest girls in the school should have been so daring as to go deliberately to the station at the risk of seriously displeasing Mrs. Abbott.
“It reminds me,” said Lily, pensively, “of a solemn old horse my grandfather had who was steady as a turtle all through his colthood and slow middle age, but when he was at the over-ripe age of twenty-two he ran away for the first time and spilt my grandmother out of the buggy in her best bonnet. Four steady, obedient years you two studious scholars have led sober lives beneath this scholastic roof, and now you disgrace yourselves and break your record. Ah, it is a weepful fact that you can’t ’most always tell what serious nags and solemn girls can do in the way of giddiness!”
“Tell us something about the fellow,” said Edna; “what did he look like? Dark, melting eyes, rich voice, smooth olive skin, etc., eh?”
“Olive skin, to be sure, and eyes that looked as if they had been boiled till they were half melted,” answered Fannie. “He was horrid.”
“I didn’t think he was so bad-looking,” said Bell; “his features were not out of the way; the worst thing about him was his looking so vulgar and flashy. It seems queer that such a person should be a particular friend of Mrs. Abbott’s.”
“O, people have queer friends, sometimes,” said Edna, “but I don’t believe she’ll take his sister.”