"Well, I fancy he does not get on too well with Mr. Gowan," said Bee.
"It always seemed to me when I saw them together that the one despised the other for brewing beer and the other despised the one for brewing books."
"Why, Bee," said the other girl admiringly, "that was almost clever. I wish I could think of that sort of thing to say."
"Must be evil communications," laughed Bee. "I never used to be accused of such a thing as cleverness. I must tell Mr. Kinross he"s contagious."
"But why do you suppose he went?" persisted Dora. "I don"t think he bothered much over Mr. Gowan; he just used to avoid him. And you can see he likes Mrs. Gowan well enough, though I suppose not so well as that fat sister he lives with. What _could_ have driven him away?"
Bee, with a little iron that she heated at a gas ring on her washstand, was carefully smoothing out some crumpled chiffons and ribbons.
For it was wet weather on the mountains, and in the big hotel where the Gowans were staying the two girls whom Hugh was pleased privately to call "little pets" had foregathered in Bee"s bedroom, to gossip happily and repair little ravages in their many and bewilderingly pretty toilettes.
Bee held her tiny iron against her cheek a moment to test its heat.
"You"ve accounted for every one but ourselves, Doady," she said; "it must have been one of us, or both. That is it; he likes us both so much, and was so afraid of proposing to the wrong one, that he dashed off in a motor-car to consider the matter in solitude."
Dora held her blouse up to the light. "I believe I"m making it worse,"
she said, pensively regarding the spot. Then she poured out a little more benzine and fell to rubbing the place again.
"What shall you say if he proposes to you, Bee?"
Bee ironed out with much deliberation the blue chiffon hat strings that made her a joy to all beholders.
"I haven"t _quite_ decided," she said thoughtfully; "I might say briskly, "With much pleasure, my dear Mr. Kinross." Or I might put my finger in my mouth and hang back a little time."
"But you would accept him, Bee?"
"Oh, of course," said Bee; "wouldn"t you?"
"I--I suppose so," said Dora.
Then both girls sighed.
"I wish he hadn"t started to go bald," Bee said pathetically.
"I wish he hadn"t started to grow stout," Dora added.
Bee pulled herself together.
"Charlie and Graham may be stout themselves by the time they are his age," she said.
Dora felt obliged to follow suit.
"And of course you can"t expect an author to have as much hair as--as Charlie, for instance, can you?" she said.
"Oh, Charlie, Charlie!" sighed Bee. "But what shall you say if it is _you_ he wants, Dora?"
Dora looked absolutely nervous.
"Oh, Bee--tell me, for goodness" sake, so I can be ready. Oh, I wish you could be there to help me, if he does. I _know_ I shall just giggle."
"You mean "should,"" said Bee calmly. "You know it is quite probable that it is I he likes."
"Oh, yes, of course, Bee, you know that is what I mean," said the younger girl; "but do tell me what to say. I should want him to understand distinctly that I couldn"t think of being married for ages.
Oh, Bee, I must have a bit more fun. Don"t you feel like that?"
"Oh, yes, that"s all very well, Do," said Bee gloomily, "but it is quite time we were engaged. It is a very serious matter and we must face it."
They faced it, sitting side by side on the edge of the narrow hotel bed, with their pretty little feet in their high-heeled shoes dangling several inches from the ground.
"I am nineteen now," Bee continued, "and I can see plainly if you don"t get engaged by the time you are as old as that there is very little chance for you nowadays. Look at my sisters, four of them older than I and not one of them engaged. And poor old Floss is thirty-four--though of course that"s a secret, Dora."
"Oh, of course," said Dora.
"Well, I"m not going to take any risks," continued Bee; "I decided that before I left school last year. Five disengaged Miss Kings are too frightful to contemplate. I shall not be as particular as the girls have been; Floss threw away one excellent chance just because the man was only five feet."
"Oh, Bee," said Dora pathetically, "of course she did! Five feet! Why, I am five feet!"
Bee shook her wise head.
"If there aren"t enough six-foot men to go round you"ve got to put up with the five-foot ones," she said inexorably. "I have quite decided that the first real man who asks me I shall accept. I don"t mean silly boys like Charlie and Graham, of course, who are only just starting their medical course and then have to buy a practice and make it pay before they can marry. Why, we should have crow"s-feet round our eyes, and thin, scraggy necks"--she pa.s.sed a hand over her plump young neck--"and be left to sit out at dances, if we waited for _them_!"
"I--I suppose so, Bee," said Dora faintly.
"Now, Dora!" said Bee sternly, "this won"t do. I saw you trying to hide the address on the envelope you posted this morning. You"ve written another letter to that Graham."
"It was a very short one, Bee," said Dora meekly.
"Well, it won"t do. Do, dear, you be guided by me and you will live to thank me," said Beatrice.
"But, Bee," began Dora imploringly, "it is not _quite_ the same with me as with you, is it? I"m only seventeen, and I"m the eldest. Don"t you think I could have just a little more fun?"
But the marvellous product of a worldly mother and a fashionable boarding-school shook her pretty head vigorously.
"It"s every bit as serious for you, Dora," she said. "Look at you, your father"s only a barrister, and you know you don"t get a big dress allowance, and there are lots of things you can"t go to for want of money. Then you have three sisters coming on. You owe it to them to marry early and get out of the way. If Floss had taken that man----"
"The five-foot one?"
"Yes, certainly--don"t be so frivolous, Dora--I repeat if Floss had married--he was well off and clever, and really very nice, she owns--the chances are the other three girls would have gone off early and been the heads of beautiful homes to-day instead of dragging the rounds of season after season and making me stay up at school till I simply refused point blank to keep my hair down another day."
Dora heaved a submissive sigh. Those three chubby, pretty little sisters of hers at home were very dear to her. And it was true they were "coming on;" Amy, the eldest of them was thirteen. She would not stand in their light.
"There"s one thing," she said a little more hopefully, "I"m sure it won"t be me--he talks to you a lot more, Bee."
"That"s only because I talk a lot more to him," said Bee, nipping the hope. "I notice he looks at you most."
Dora gazed at herself in the gla.s.s, and the reflection of the young rounded face and the candid eyes and the pretty hair was so pleasing that the instinct of conquest braced her.