"Well, we can travel on an empty stomach quite as well as you can and a great deal weller," insisted Dum, and Dee and Mary and I agreed.
"Please don't awaken me," said Jessie as she twisted her hair into the patent curlers that she managed so well nobody but a girl could have told that her curls were not natural. "I certainly want to sleep in the morning. Dr. White begged me to go rowing with him before breakfast, but I can't bear to get up so early in the morning. It seemed to distress him terribly but then he is such a flirt one can never tell." All this with many glances in my direction.
We had gathered in the room occupied by Tweedles and Jessie for a little chat before turning in for the night.
"How cr-u-le!" exclaimed Mary. "What makes you think he is such a flirt?"
"Ah, that would be telling!" and Jessie began dabbing on the cold cream.
It is strange how indifferent some girls are to what other girls think of them. Jessie Wilcox, the most careful person in the world to look well when any males were around, did not mind in the least letting us see her with her hair twisted up in little wads and clasped with innumerable arrangements made of wire covered with leather. The things looked like huge ticks sticking out from her head, not such a shapely head, either, now that one saw it with the hair drawn back so tightly. Cold cream may be a future beautifier but certainly not a present one. She laid it on in generous hunks and then massaged herself, contorting her countenance in a most disconcerting manner.
"I don't think Wink is a flirt at all," said Dee stoutly. "He is a very good friend of mine and I reckon I know him about as well as anybody in the world. Of course he will flirt if it is up to him, but that is not making him a flirt."
"Ah, indeed!" and Jessie began rubbing cocoa butter on her neck. "Perhaps you don't know the flirtatious side of him."
"Thank goodness, I don't. He and I talk sense to each other," and Dee scornfully sniffed the air. She and Dum hated the odor of cocoa butter, declaring it made their room smell like an apothecary's shop.
"Why don't you and Dum come in our room for to-night?" I suggested, scenting mischief as well as cocoa butter in the air, since the usually tactful Dee was on the war-path. "You will be sure to disturb Jessie in the morning if you sleep in here. Come on! I'll sleep three in the bed with you and get in the middle at that," and so they came, expressing themselves privately as glad to get away from their roommate, who did smell so of cocoa butter and also looked so hideous with her hair done up in those tick-like arrangements and her face shiny with grease.