"I did say that Tweedles and I could sleep three in a room, and I wish you could have seen the way they jumped at me. It was Miss Judith. 'We are under no necessity for crowding,'" I mimicked her. "I did not like to insist, but of course I meant it might make our board a little cheaper. If you had been there, you would have knuckled under just like the rest of us."
"Do you think it would be wise to go without knowing? I don't want to seem mercenary with all of you high-minded ladies, but I do think there would be a certain satisfaction in knowing just what one was paying for sun-dials and wafers that can be seen through."
"Well, then, you can do the asking! I can't. Was there ever a moment when we could broach the subject, girls?"
"Never!" we chorused loyally.
"We will just go 'buying a pig in a poke,' as it were, and maybe after a night on the garden bench I can muster up courage to ask them what I owe them for the privilege," teased the professor.
"I don't like betting on a certainty, but I don't believe you will be able to do it, and am willing to wager almost anything that you can't get yourself to the point any more than we could. You might ask Miss Arabella, but if you tackle Miss Judith and she looks at you as she did at me when I suggested three in a room, I bet you father's copy of Timrod's poetry that you change the subject."
"Done! I bet you the volume of J. Gordon Coogler's 'Purely Original Verse' that I am living at the Maison Laurens on a purely business basis within the next seven hours. I am going to settle it before tonight."
"Will it be Miss Judith?" I asked, fearing Miss Arabella might be the cause of my losing the Timrod poetry, which I was anxious to write father I had found for him at the second-hand book store.
"Miss Judith and no other! I should feel very sneaky if I got my information through the easier channel of Miss Arabella. Miss Judith, and by seven o'clock."
"I hope we will know before Zebedee comes back," said Dee. "We shall never hear the last of it if he finds us boarding for untold sums."