Page:Betty Gordon at Boarding School.djvu/52

42 grain of culture; but at that, I can't remember having a pitched battle with a girl during my care-free existence there."

"She's used to having her own way," said Betty, with a laudable ambition to be charitable, an intention which she inadvertently destroyed by adding vigorously: "She'd get that knocked out of her if she lived West a little while."

"Guess the East can be trusted to smooth her down," commented Bob grimly. "Unless she's planning to live in seclusion, she won't get far in peace or happiness unless she behaves a bit more like a human being."

The girl was more or less in evidence during the rest of the trip and incurred the cordial enmity of every woman in the car by the coolness with which she appropriated the dressing room in the morning and curled her hair and made an elaborate toilet in perfect indifference to the other feminine travelers who were shut out till she had the last hairpin adjusted to her satisfaction.

She was met at the Chicago terminal by a party of gay friends who whisked her off in a palatial car, and Bob and Betty who, acting on Mr. Gordon's advice, spent their two-hour wait between trains driving along the Lake Shore Drive, forgot her completely.

But first Betty fell victim to the charms of a