“Barbara,” he said to me. “I do not beleive that Sister is glad to see me.”
“I don’t have to look at you,” Sis said, “I can knit.”
“Tell me, Barbara,” he said to me beseachingly, “am I as hard to look at as all that?”
“I rather like looking at you,” I rejoined with cander. “Across the room.”
He said we were not as agreable as we might be, so he picked up a magazine and looked at the Automobile advertizments.
“I can’t aford a car,” he said. “Don’t listen to me, either of you. I’m only talking to myself. But I like to read the ads. Hello, here’s a snappy one for five hundred and fifty. Let me see. If I gave up a couple of Clubs, and smokeing, and flours to Debutantes—except Barbara, because I intend to buy every pozy in town when she comes out—I might——”
“Carter,” I said, “will you let me see that ad?”
Now the reason I had asked for it was this: in the book the Girl Detective had a small but powerful car, and she could do anything with it, even going up the Court House steps once in it and interupting a trial at the criticle moment.
But I did not, at that time, expect to more than wish for such a vehical. How pleasant, my heart said, to have a car holding to, and since there was to be no bathing, et cetera, and I was not allowed a horse in the country, except my old pony and the basket faeton, to ramble through the lanes with a choice Spirit, and talk about ourselves mostly, with a sprinkling of other subjects!
Five hundred and fifty from nine hundred and forty-five leaves three hundred and forty-five. But I need few garments at school, wearing mostly unaforms of blue serge with one party frock for Friday nights and receptions to Lecturers and Members of the Board. And besides, to own a machine would mean less carfare and no shoes to speak of, because of not walking.