"Is Laly's illness a matter of doctors and drugs, or is it a becoming
little paleness in a pink tea-gown?" wrote Hazel to Marion, after the
arrival of Eulalie's ambassador, with her royal message. "If it is at
all serious, Elvira will go home at once. If it isn't, I would like to
keep her a while. She has refused the man of the mills, but I think he
is trembling on the brink of another proposal, from which I hope a
different result."
Marion wrote back:
"Tell Elvira to stay as long as she likes. Laly's pallor came
out of her powder box. She eats rations enough for two."
When Hugh returned Eulalie made bitter moan about her hapless lot.
"I've been so hunted and harassed by autumn dudes that I didn't want,
and their bleating autos, I haven't had the peace of a cat. And you
stayed away so, and Elvira has utterly abandoned me. She never came
home."
"Your sister Hazel wouldn't let her," said Hugh, looking inquisitively
at Eulalie's healthful bloom.
"Oh, I got along. And I suppose those roses went to her head, poor old
dear; it's such a new thing for her to have them given her. Didn't she
chant paeans over them?"
"You couldn't notice any paeans," said Hugh, "but several fellows were
trying to chant proposals to her besides uncle E. Ginger! but you
ought to see Elvira now, Miss Eulalie; she's all dimply and pink, and
her hair isn't slick, like it used to be, though it isn't messy,
either; it's kind of crimpled up high, some way, like you'd raveled
out a brown silk dress and piled up the ravelings. She wears new kind
of things, too--dresses with jig-saw things--you know what I mean,
frilly tricks that make you think of peach blossoms, or pie plant when
it's cooked and all pink-white and clear. Why, it's true as preaching.
I never knew her until I met her there at Lindale."
"So my prim, old-maid sister has turned butterfly since she went
gadding?"
"No, she isn't a butterfly; she's too well supplied with brains for
that; she couldn't keep that bunch of old worldlings hypnotized as she
does if she hadn't a pile of original ideas of her own, though the
dimples and frillicues may have caught them in the first place."
"Huh!" commented Eulalie, shortly. "I wonder how you happened to get
so well acquainted with her, just passing through Lindale."
"I couldn't have," Hugh owned; "takes time to learn to appreciate a
girl like that. If it hadn't been for your message, I suppose I never
should have gone beyond the preface of her character; but when I saw
the whirlwind she had stirred up among the dry leaves of the elderly
boys' hearts, I concluded to postpone the tramping trip and watch the
fun a while. Honestly, she was a new experience to me."
"I'm surprised to hear of her frivolity." A slight, shrewish flavor
crept into Eulalie's smooth voice. "The way she used to persecute me
for having a few beaux----"
"Oh, she doesn't want them, nor encourage them," Hugh quickly
explained. "She just stays still, like a lamp, you know, that shines
out soft and clear because it can't help it, and they go bumping along
and sizzle their wings. It isn't her doings. They're mostly all too
old for her--why, do you know, Miss Eulalie, I had supposed she was
older than I, and I discovered she was two years younger?"
"I hope that won't prevent her being a good aunt to you," mused
Eulalie, with restrained spite.
Hugh laughed, cheerily.
"She won't be any kind of an aunt to me--to uncle E.'s disgust. I did
think he deserved a free field, because he discovered her in the
chrysalis--when he came here with me; and he got it, so far as I was
concerned. But he admitted to me that he thought it folly to keep on
butting your head against a perfectly immovable wall, alluring as the
wall might be; that he should go back to his mills and his former
resolution and keep off the battlefield of love forever after. So then
I concluded to give up my tramp entirely for this year and see if I
could make a go with Cupid--and--a--Elvira is having a wedding dress
made, and is going to accept me as a wedding present."