"This is a good polisher, Phil. I'm going to show you how to do your own manicuring—every lady her own maid. Sarah dug up a colored hairdresser, manicurist, and light-running domestic chatterbox this morning, and she gave my hair a pulling I shan't forget in a hurry. Never again! If you can't have a trained maid, you'd better be your own beautifier. I had a wonderful girl the last time I was over, and took her with me on a motor trip through the château country. She was an outrageous little flirt. Two chauffeurs got into a row about her during the week we spent at Tours, and one pounded the other into a pulp. The French rural police are duller than the ox, and they locked up Marie as a witness. Imagine my feelings! It was very annoying."
Her smile belied the annoyance. Phil surmised that she had enjoyed the experience; but Lois added no details to her hasty picture. Lois did not trouble herself greatly with details; everything with her was sketchy and impressionistic.
"What about boys, Phil?"
"I've had one proposal; he was a senior with a funny stammer. He went away with his diploma last June, and said he'd never forget. I got his cards to-day. She's a Lafayette girl he had down for the 'Pan' in his senior year. She has golden hair," Phil added musingly.
"The scoundrel; to forget you as quick as that!" And Lois laughed as Phil bent her head and clasped her hands in a mockery of dejection. "You've come out and I suppose you are asked to all the parties. Let me see, when I was a girl there were candy-pullings, and 'companies' where you sat around and were bored until somebody proposed playing 'The Prince of Paris Lost his Hat' or some game like that. When the old folks went to bed, our hostess would find a pack of cards—authors, most likely—or play a waltz on the soft pedal for two couples to dance. Wholesome but not exciting."
"Oh, we're livelier and better than that! They have real balls now at the Masonic Hall; and all the fraternities have dances, and there's the Pan-Hellenic, and so on. And there are dinners in courses, and bridge no end!"
"Bridge!"
Lois shrugged her shoulders, lifted her pretty brows, and tossed the nail-polisher on to the bureau to emphasize her contempt for bridge in all its forms.
"As to young men, Phil. Tell me all about the Montgomery cavaliers."
"Oh, every girl knows all the boys. They are divided into two classes as usual, nice and un-nice. Some of them have flirted with me and I have flirted with them. I suppose there was nothing very naughty in that."