“Otho, go along and introduce him to some girls, and I’ll stay with Floy and tell her about my lovely trip to Europe last year.”
Beresford, disappointed in a faint hope that she might have proffered Floy to him as a partner, went away with Otho, and Maybelle made herself agreeable to her companion.
At last she observed, patronizingly:
“You’ve never been anywhere, have you, Floy?”
“Not since mamma brought me a little girl back to the farm,” Floy answered, flushing sensitively, for she felt the sting in Maybelle’s patronizing tone.
But the latter continued, gently and purringly:
“It’s too bad your having to stay with those poor, hard-working people, isn’t it? Shouldn’t you like to support yourself, Floy?”
“I should not know how to earn a penny,” murmured Floy, who was like the naughty Brier-Rose of the poem:
“Whene’er a thrifty matron this idle maid espied,
She shook her head in warning and scarce her wrath could hide;