Page:To-morrow Morning (1927).pdf/138

 "Oh, Joe darling! To-morrow's so soon!" Her eyes filled; she pulled in her lips and bit down on them.

"Sure I'm right," Joe answered, embarrassed and brisk at the sight of her tears. "He's in there now talking away; they never even saw me when I went in for cigarettes. I betcha anything those two will be engaged before I come home again."

"Oh, Joe! If Charlotte was married, think of the things we could do! Go abroad!"

It seemed too good to come true. But Charlotte and Hoagland did get engaged. They were to be married in June, just after Joe's graduation. "Of course I'll miss her terribly," Kate told her friends. "But he certainly has turned out to be a splendid steady young man, and they're wonderfully suited to each other." She only hoped she didn't show how surprised she was that Charlotte should be engaged at all. And although Mr. and Mrs. Driggs weren't quite—well—Hoagland was asked everywhere, and while one mustn't think of money in connection with marriage

Charlotte, placid and pleased, embroidered monograms, went shopping, tried on dresses. Dorothy Jackson gave a linen shower for her, Gladys Blunt a kitchen shower, with white satin ribbons tied to egg beaters and lace-edged bouquets stuck into tin funnels. There were luncheons with Kewpie dolls dressed as brides, sticking out their stomachs among roses and asparagus fern—"Now—my—dear! Did you ever see anything so cunning? Now I ask you!" The girls