“I'm so glad you are making my banjo useful at the outset, Miss Dryfoos.” Both girls stared at her, but found it hard to cope with the fact that this was the lady friend whose banjo Beaton had lent them. “Mr. Beaton mentioned that he had left it here. I hope you'll keep it as long as you find it useful.”
At this amiable speech even Christine could not help thanking her. “Of course,” she said, “I expect to get another, right off. Mr. Beaton is going to choose it for me.”
“You are very fortunate. If you haven't a teacher yet I should so like to recommend mine.”
Mela broke out in her laugh again. “Oh, I guess Christine's pretty well suited with the one she's got,” she said, with insinuation. Her sister gave her a frowning glance, and Margaret did not tempt her to explain.
“Then that's much better,” she said. “I have a kind of superstition in such matters; I don't like to make a second choice. In a shop I like to take the first thing of the kind I'm looking for, and even if I choose further I come back to the original.”
“How funny!” said Mela. “Well, now, I'm just the other way. I always take the last thing, after I've picked over all the rest. My luck always seems to be at the bottom of the heap. Now, Christine, she's more like you. I believe she could walk right up blindfolded and put her hand on the thing she wants every time.”
“I'm like father,” said Christine, softened a little by the celebration of her peculiarity. “He says the reason so many people don't get what they want is that they don't want it bad enough. Now, when I want a thing, it seems to me that I want it all through.”
“Well, that's just like father, too,” said Mela. “That's the way he done when he got that eighty-acre piece next to Moffitt that he kept when he sold the farm, and that's got some of the best gas-wells on it now that there is anywhere.” She addressed the explanation to her sister, to the exclusion of Margaret, who, nevertheless, listened with a smiling face and a resolutely polite air of being a party to the conversation. Mela rewarded her amiability by saying to her, finally, “You've never been in the natural-gas country, have you?”
“Oh no! And I should so much like to see it!” said Margaret, with a fervor that was partly, voluntary.
“Would you? Well, we're kind of sick of it, but I suppose it would strike a stranger.”