“I’ll stop and tell her so as I go through Lindale, on my annual camping tramp—shall I?”
“Oh, yes, do—please do,” Eulalie pleaded, sweetly.
During the few days before his departure she grew pale and languid, and reminded him frequently of his promise.
“Be sure and send her right home,” she urged. “Tell her I’m sick and miserable, and Marion doesn’t treat me well.”
V.
“Is Laly’s illness a matter of doctors and drugs, or is it a becoming little paleness in a pink tea-gown?” wrote Hazel to Marion, after the arrival of Eulalie’s ambassador, with her royal message. ”If it is at all serious, Elvira will go home at once. If it isn’t, I would like to keep her a while. She has refused the man of the mills, but I think he is trembling on the brink of another proposal, from which I hope a different result.”
Marion wrote back:
“Tell Elvira to stay as long as she likes. Laly’s pallor came out of her powder box. She eats rations enough for two.”
When Hugh returned Eulalie made bitter moan about her hapless lot.
“I’ve been so hunted and harassed by autumn dudes that I didn’t want, and their bleating autos, I haven’t had the peace of a cat. And you stayed away so, and Elvira has utterly abandoned me. She never came home.”