Page:Comin' Thro' the Rye (1898).djvu/142

134 girls, you know, but, I fancy, in moderation. He does not look like an universal lover of womankind—we want a diffusive man."

"If he does not come," says Belle, "to view our forlorn and piteous gambols, then all spring and verve will depart therefrom, and we shall be like apple tart without the apples."

"If he only knew," says Emma, "that every petticoat, skirt, and tucker in this establishment will be washed to his glory, he could not choose but come. He could not be man born of woman without feeling touched."

"Helen Adair, you shrimp! you have spoken to him, have you not?" asks Laura. "Is he made of gentle stuff, or likely to kick over the traces?"

"I don't know," I say, laughing. "Shall I ask him when I see him?"

"Do," says Kate, impressively, laying her hand on my head. "Go down on your knees to him, and refuse to get up again until he says he will come! There will be a ragged look about us all if he does not!"

A bell ringing in the distance calls us together like a flock of sheep, to go out for a walk.

It is Wednesday afternoon, and we are all, great and small, upstairs unearthing our evening dresses, and fishing up boots, gloves, and other minor appendages. To me this party is a new experience. Never have I been to anything that bore the most ghostly resemblance to one; therefore my festive garment is not, like that belonging to some of my less fortunate school-mates, grown too short, too tight, or too narrow. Nevertheless, it is not much to boast of, being a species of Phoenix, revived from the ashes of one of mother's dead and gone tails. It is rusty, it is musty, it is villainously bare of ornament and green of hue, but it comes decently down to my heels, and does not refuse to meet over my chest—a piece of good luck on which I may congratulate myself, seeing that on all sides