“I don’t care,” she said, “I shall ask Carrie. He’s not a bit too old; and I have met him before—you haven’t. I’m not going to be bored to death by Jack Somers, and have to do all the talking myself; and that’s my decision,” she said irrevocably.
“We shall have our hair up to-morrow, too,” returned Flo, with the spiteful familiarity of a younger sister, “and I shall hear every word you say, because I shall be on the other side.”
“I don’t know why they ask such a crowd,” another half-blown bud of sixteen joined in. “I expect Rollo Butterfield went to school with most of them—they’re old enough.”
And fat enough—and dull enough—and bald enough—the poise of her chin seemed to say. I admired her confidence.
“And what about——?” a nod of Miss Nellie’s head gave the direction to my eyes. I looked, and saw apparently unheeded by the noisy group, the pretty, timid creature I had remarked once or twice before, an imported cousin of somebody’s, condemned to wear pink because it suited the rest. She was out in the cold; but something in the abstracted quietness of her pose told me it was perhaps as much from choice as from the passing-over of her companions.
“Oh,” Miss Flo replied, “she can go somewhere near Rollo Butterfield—she’ll be less awkward near him than with anybody else. And then Jack Somers.”
Seeing myself so allotted, I thought it well to make the acquaintance beforehand of the maid for whose conversational flow I was to be responsible. I skirted the group, and sat down by her.
“I see you’re taking a short rest from your duties, Aggie,” I remarked. “Are you having a good time?”
“Yes, thank you, Mr. Butterfield,” she answered shyly. “I think it’s all lovely.”
“The dresses and things?” I asked.