Page:Girls of Central High on the Stage.djvu/25

Rh study by hearing somebody calling breathlessly after her.

"Hi! Hi! Aren't you going to look around? Jess Morse!"

A girl smaller than herself, and dressed from neck to heels in a glistening raincoat, ran under Jess's umbrella and seized her arm. She was a laughing, curly-haired girl with dancing black eyes and an altogether roguish look.

"Jess Morse! don't you ever look back on the street—no matter what happens?" she demanded.

"For what was Lot's wife turned to salt, Bobby?" returned Jess, solemnly.

"For good! Now you know, don't you?" laughed Clara Hargrew, whose youthful friends knew her as "Bobby."

"Why aren't you at the 'big doin's' tonight," demanded the harum-scarum Bobby. "You're a Mother of the Republic; what means this delinquency?"

"Just supposing I had something else to do?" returned Jess, trying to speak lightly. "I'm on an errand now."

She wished to shake Bobby off. She dared not take her into Mr. Vandergriff's store. Suppose the butter and egg man should treat her as the grocer had?