Page:Quits - Abbie Farwell Brown.djvu/11

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(aside). Well, give 'em as good as they send.

. (watching the boys). Oh, I suspect they had some errand at the station as usual, to meet some one.

(aside; relieved). All bluff!

. Is that what you girls do up here? Well, you are a bashful, timid little lot, aren't you? Kit, I suppose you do that too, when you are not expecting brothers on the train.

. Me? Oh, never! (Horrified.) But they, oh, they are always getting into scrapes. (Boys start again.)

. Why, what have they done now?

. Oh, got into some mess or other with Miss Griffin. They say they are all right, and haven't done anything wrong, and can prove it too. But you know they have said that before.

. (aside). If that is all bluff, they're doing it mighty well.

. Who are these fair maids? I am quite curious about them. Shall we meet them? They must be very interesting girls.

. Oh, they are. I should think you would be "curious to meet any one so freshly original, bright, and charmingly interesting." ( starts.)

(aside). Extract from my last confounded letter.

. Oh, come now! Introduce us this evening, will you, girls? They must be great larks.

. (disgustedly). Just the kind men always like. But we don't see much of them here. They are not our style exactly. Very different from us.

. Yes? I should hope so!

. (quickly). Oh, you seem to know something about them too. Why, pray, are you so very emphatic?

. (feigning embarrassment). Well, to tell the truth, we had heard of them.

. Yes. You see some fellows at college—

. Yes, yes. Well?

. Well, they corresponded with some men at Harvard on the sly, you see. Fellows were perfectly disgusted, but couldn't get out of it. And they say these girls wrote the most sickening letters—the worst trash! ( winks aside to ; girls are indignant.)

. Oh, they did. Trash, did they?

. Yes—utter bosh!

. Hum! What did the men write? I suppose theirs was sense.

(carelessly). Oh, they just gulled the girls with nonsense. But the poor things were completely taken in, you know.

. Yes, by Jove. Such geese!

. Perhaps they weren't such geese as the men thought.

. Oh, but they were, though.

. You seem to know an awful lot about it. I think there's something queer about this story, don't you, Kittie?