“And I hate it! Forty-two have I made this year, and mommy has six more cut out.”
There was a moment’s silence, and then Tabitha said, “Janice.” For some reason the name seemed to embarrass her, for the moment it was spoken she coloured.
“What?”
“Dost thee not think—perhaps—if we steal out and take the shirts to the stable, thy mother will never—?”
“Tibbie Drinker! Go out of the house in a sack? I’d as soon go out in my night-rail.”
“Thee breakfasts in a négligée, even when Philemon is here,” retorted Miss Drinker. “Wouldst as lief breakfast in thy shift?”
“No,” said Miss Janice, with a wicked sparkle in her eyes, “because if I did Philemon would come oftener than ever.”
“Fie upon thee, Janice Meredith!” cried her friend, “for a froward, indelicate female.”
“And why more indelicate than the men who’d come?” demanded Janice.
“‘Immodest words admit of no defence,
For want of modesty is want of sense,’”