Those Dale Girls

"Look at her, Peter Snooks," said Hester to a fox-terrier at her side; "just look at her! She's curled up in a heap, reveling in that fascinating Kipling, with her mouth all screwed up for this popcorn, which she thinks we will take in state to her ladyship. But we'll fool her--eh, Snooks? We'll fool her completely. We'll just sit complacently on the floor and eat it all up ourselves."

The dog jumped about rapturously. The girl, who was kneeling before an open fire, shook a wire cage energetically over the coals, and watched the corn burst into great white flakes.

"It does smell delicious," came in an insinuating tone from the window-seat across the room.

Hester maintained a lofty silence, and tipping the corn into a bowl, sprinkled it with salt, adding dabs of butter. She then tossed a piece to the dog, and began to sample it herself with apparent satisfaction, for she smacked her lips and said, reflectively, as she put her hands to her burning cheeks: "I believe it is quite worth ruining my complexion over."

Suddenly she whisked up bowl and dog, and crossing the room, dropped both on the seat beside her sister. "There!" she exclaimed, "you knew I would never eat it alone, even if you are a duffer!"

"'Duffer' is most inelegant" (this from Julie in an assumption of stern reproach); "I do not see wherever you picked up such a word."

"Read it in a book," quoted Hester, laughing. This was a joke of longstanding between them--to hold literature responsible for any suspicious scraps of knowledge. It was a phrase they used also with much frequency in argument, particularly when the subject was beyond the range of their experience. "Don't know a thing about it, read it in a book," one of them would say facetiously, by way of backing up some remarkable statement, and feel herself at once relieved from personal responsibility.

"You need not put on such frills," Hester now said to her sister. "You know you adore slang yourself."

Julie was gazing out of the window. "Look, Hester, quick! There go the crew! How they are skimming down the river! I'd no idea they trained out here, had you?"

Both girls watched intently as the narrow shell shot by, the men pulling the long, steady stroke which was the pride of their university.

"Aren't they splendid?" Hester exclaimed, enthusiastically. "I wish we knew some of the college men, Julie, don't you?"

"It would be fun. I'd like to see something of college life. Perhaps we may meet an occasional senior if Miss Ware takes us about any this winter."

"Do you suppose he'd be nice?" inquired Hester, quizzically. "I don't think we know much about very young men, do you? All we've known have been so much older than we are."

Julie puckered up her forehead and gazed after the vanishing crew. She was trying to classify an unknown species.

"It does seem odd," continued Hester, "our contemplating formal society, doesn't it? I believe I shall hate it. We have roamed around with Daddy too much to be quite like pattern society girls."

"I tell you what we'll do, Hester; we'll go out with Miss Ware, meet loads of people and pick out a nice congenial few whom Dad will like, too, and just cultivate them informally. You know how Dad dislikes society in the conventional sense, but he wants us to take our proper place; and of course we ought to know people, now that we have really settled down in Radnor to live."