"Perhaps it will be," I said, "but I'd rather keep a country store than do anything. You can see so many people that way, 'specially if you have the postoffice in it."
"You like people, then?" inquired the boy.
"Like people? I should say I do. I just adore people; and I mean to know just as many people as I can."
"Well, that is the requisite for successful novel writing, so our professor in English tells us: 'Know people and sympathize with them, all kinds and conditions.' But tell me something, Miss Page, does Annie sing? Mrs. Pore's voice brought old sinners to church that had not been for many a year. She sang in the choir at the little old Episcopal church at Price's Landing and although I was nothing but a kid,—you see I have not been there for five years,—I used to thrill all over when she chanted the Te Deum Laudamus."
"Oh, yes, Annie's voice is splendid. Miss Cox is teaching her and I believe she expects great things of her. We are to have a concert at Gresham before long and then you can hear her."
I looked over at a group of girls and boys where Dum and Annie were talking very gayly with Tom Hawkins, alias Shorty, and smiled to think of Annie's hesitancy in coming that day because she was so afraid of boys, and then I laughed outright when I considered how little Shorty resembled Dum's hero, Prosper le Gai.
The ice cream that Shorty brought to Mabel Binks must have been as bitter as gall, judging from the faces that young lady made while devouring it, nor did it "set easy on her innards," as Mammy Susan would put it. Could it be that she had literally turned green from jealousy and the ice cream was innocent, after all? It must have been a bitter pill to have the despised "Orphan Annie," with her kid friends, carry off the most desirable young man at Hill-Top.
"Aren't you feeling well, Mabel?" said the good-natured Josephine Barr, as Harvie Price and I passed near her on our way to join the group where my special friends were.
"Yes, I'm just disgusted. Did you ever see such a beau grabber in your life as that countrified Page Allison? And there's 'Orphan Annie' actually posing as a belle! They make me sick."
I did not hear what Jo answered, but I felt that Annie and I were safe in her hands. My cheeks were burning as though Mabel had given me a real slap.