An Executive Meeting
“Why, Frances, is that you? And on your way to the Club, too,” cried
the blue-eyed girl, as she caught up with the brown-eyed blonde, “how
lucky I am; I shall have a nice long talk with you as we go along! How
well you are looking to-day, quite fresh, I declare! Dear me, I should
have put on my gloves before I left home, but I was in such haste that—”
“By the way, Dorothy, it seems to me that you are not wearing as many
rings as usual this winter. Surely, I miss the diamond you used to
wear!”
“Why, no I’m not; so much jewelry is always vulgar, and rings are _so_
hard on one’s gloves. Mercy, we have walked a whole block, and you
haven’t told me a bit of news!”
“Haven’t I? By the way, I heard Ja—a man I know, say something about
you yesterday which was quite a surprise. I don’t really know whether I
ought to repeat it, or not.”
“Oh, he wouldn’t have said it before you unless he expected you to
repeat it, dear. You must tell me what it is, or I shall fancy it was
not really unpleasant, and, really I’ve had so many compliments of late
that it will be quite a change. I am actually afraid that Cla—a friend
who thinks too well of me—will make me vain, and that—”
“Impossible, dear. By the way, I hear that Clarence Lighthed comes to
see you occasionally now, and—”
“Not oftener than once in twenty-four hours, dear.”
“Yes. And really he has been so devoted to so many girls that—”
“It is a wonder that he has never thought of _you_! Why so it is, now
that I think of it. But never mind, there may be a chance for you yet.
Pardon me, you were about to repeat something you had heard about me,
and I’m afraid I interrupted you.”
“Was I? Dear me, I have quite forgotten what it was; nothing very
important, I’m sure.”
“Very true. By the way, I heard something about _you_ the other day,
too. It was extremely complimentary—so much so indeed, that you will
think I am trying to flatter you, if I repeat it.”
“Indeed? Oh, I remember now what I was about to tell you. It was—so you
really heard something nice about poor little me?”
“Yes, I really did. I’ll tell you after you have finished your story. I
really must not interrupt you again.”
“Yes, Ja—I mean the man I know—said the other day that he thought
you—now you mustn’t mind this, at all, Dorothy; I told him at once that
nobody else had ever said such a thing of you.”
“How kind of you to champion me, dear; I really did not expect it.”
“Oh, yes; I often do it. He said—I wouldn’t repeat it to you, but the
absurdity of the charge takes all the sting out of it. He said, ‘I
consider Dorothy Darling the most heartless flirt I ever knew!’ Isn’t
it too funny!” and she burst into a peal of laughter.
The blue-eyed girl paused to pat a little dog before she replied: “How
well you do tell a story, Frances, dear. Look at that poor, old blind
man over yonder; let us cross over and give him some pennies,” and she
was almost dancing as she crossed the street.
“Perhaps he is an impostor, after all,” said the brown-eyed blonde. “By
the way, you said somebody paid me a nice compliment the other day. Do
tell me what it was, and if I ever get the chance—be it twenty years
from now—I’ll do the same for you.”
“Oh, yes, indeed. Old Miss Lucy Brownsmith said to me, only the other
day, ‘Really, Frances is quite a nice-looking girl now that she has
given up lacing so tightly.’ I knew you would be so pleased. Well,
here we are at the Club; I am afraid that I must have walked too fast
for you, dear; you look quite flushed.”
“Oh, Emily, dear,” she whispered, as she embraced her friend in the
cloak room, “Jack is wild with jealousy! He told Frances the other day
that I was the most heartless flirt he ever knew!”
“Then, he is ready to go half-way toward making up! Oh, I am so glad
that I—”
“Half-way? Do you suppose, Emily Marshmallow, that after allowing
Clarence Lighthed to bore me almost to death for two weeks, I shall be
willing to go half-way to make up with Jack?”
“But you said the other day that unless you _did_ make up with him, you
would learn to be a trained nurse and devote your life to others, and I
thought—”
“Never mind what I said the other day—that was before I knew how
jealous Jack was. And all I’ve got to say, is this: if you expect me
to make a fright of myself in a gray cloak and bonnet and cotton gown
just to please _you_, you are very much mistaken!”
The girl with the eyeglasses put her head in at the door, “Come into
the club-room right away, girls,” she said. “Evelyn is here, and she
has something of the greatest importance to tell us.”
The president was evidently excited as she called the meeting to order.
“I am just as angry as I can be,” she said. “What do you think I found
in my mail to-day? A letter from a man who is old enough to know
better, suggesting a topic for discussion by this club. That topic was,
‘The Best Method of Keeping the Hat on Straight.’”
“You don’t say so!” said the girl with the Roman nose. “Well, it only
shows that our mental advancement has made him uneasy.”
“Of course,” said the president. “Then, as if that was not enough,
he suggests a small mirror fastened to the inside of an umbrella or
parasol as—”
“Pshaw!” said the brown-eyed blonde, “a highly polished silver handle
answers the same purpose and attracts less attention.”
“Talk about hats,” said the girl with the classic profile, “men are
just as fussy about their own. Did you ever see anybody put on a man’s
hat to suit him?”
“Never,” said the president. “I had an awful time when Tom’s arm was
broken. I would put on his hat as carefully as I could—he always would
tip it too far back himself—and yet, each time he would remove it, look
suspiciously into the crown, and put it on again himself.”
“As if it makes any difference how a man looks, anyhow,” said the girl
with the eyeglasses. “So long as they are nice and generous, no girl
cares—”
“Very true,” broke in the girl with the dimple in her chin, “and it
is frequently the pocket of a last year’s overcoat which harbors the
largest box of candy.”
“I should like to know how a man manages to keep his hat on without
veil or pins,” said the girl with the Roman nose.
“He doesn’t always do it in a high wind,” said the girl with the
classic profile.
“And yet he always wonders why a woman holds her hat on when she is
driving,” remarked the girl with the dimple in her chin.
“You know what a fuss men always make about big theater hats,” said
the president. “Well, thinking to please Tom, I got a tiny bonnet,
which was so becoming that it attracted as much attention as a regular
mountain of feathers and velvet.”
“And wasn’t he pleased?” asked the girl with the eyeglasses.
“Not when the bill came in, and he found that it cost rather more
than a large hat. I said that he ought to be content to pay for the
principle of a thing. He replied that it looked as if the interest was
all about all he could afford. I suppose he thought that was sarcastic.”
“Men have such queer ideas of humor, anyhow,” said the girl with the
dimple in her chin; “why, I know a man who once laughed heartily at a
joke on himself.”
“Perhaps he owed money to the man who made it, or wanted his vote for
something,” said the girl with the classic profile.
“Well, I’d like to know who first invented hat-pins,” said the
brown-eyed blonde. “I am sure it was not a woman, because—”
“It was a man, and he was either an old bachelor or a bigamist,” said
the girl with the Roman nose. “I had two pins running straight into my
scalp all during service on Sunday. Dick was with me, too, and it was
so hard to look saintly when—”
“Men always ask why we don’t tie our hats on, when we complain of
pins,” said the girl with the dimple in her chin. “Wouldn’t we
look nice with our jaws tied up like those of a small boy with the
toothache?”
“To say nothing of having our hearing so impaired that we couldn’t be
sure whether compliments whispered into our ears were intended for us
or were merely remarks made about other girls,” said the brown-eyed
blonde.
“Well, girls,” said the president, “I see you all resent it, as I do;
and I’m just going to write that horrid man a letter telling him that
the Teacup Club has too many serious topics to discuss to waste time
upon anything relating to millinery.”
“Speaking of millinery,” said the blue-eyed girl, “did you ever see
anything as sweet as the new hats! I went with Elizabeth to select the
ones for her trousseau the other day, and it did seem hard to me that
a girl only has a chance _once_ in her life to buy as many hats as she
really wants, and—”
“Not to mention the fact that it is just at the time when she is so
much interested in her future husband that she can’t give her whole
mind to the subject,” broke in the girl with the eyeglasses. “Now, if
she could only choose her trousseau a year after her marriage, instead
of before.”
“Yes; or even six months,” said the president. “Well, my new hat
must cost five dollars less than I had hoped. I borrowed that amount
from Tom last month; and—will you believe it?—he took it out of my
allowance for this month, in spite of the fact that I told him I had
spent it for his birthday present.”
“But why didn’t you take it out of your housekeeping allowance? You
usually do,” said the girl with the Roman nose.
“Because I had already taken enough for a half-dozen pairs of gloves
out of that. It happened that he had not given a single stag dinner
during the month, so I could not filch too much without discovery. When
he gives a dinner, I can always pay myself well for the trouble of it.
If he complains of the bills, I just say, ‘Yes, dear, I see that we
cannot afford any more stag dinners,’ and that settles it at once,” she
added.
“I should think it would,” said the blue-eyed girl, thoughtfully. “Did
you tell Tom how mean you thought it of him to expect you to pay back
money that you had borrowed?”
“I did. I said, ‘I wouldn’t be as selfish as you are for anything!’”
“And did that make him feel badly? I should think so.”
“Not a bit. You don’t know Tom; he just laughed as if it was funny.
Luckily, I had given him a silk umbrella for his birthday, and as he
has two already, and this one is—er rather small, I shall get a good
deal of use out of it myself.”
“And you hadn’t one at all, had you?” said the girl with the dimple in
her chin. “I remember the day you lost yours.”
“Yes. Wasn’t it nice of me to buy one for him when I really needed it
for myself? But one can’t expect a man to appreciate generosity.”
“Oh, girls,” said the girl with the dimple in her chin, “what do you
think I heard to-day?”
“I don’t know what _you_ heard,” said the girl with the Roman nose,
“but I heard that Clarence Lighthed has just inherited a fortune from
an uncle whom he had never seen! You know he is my cousin, and—”
“Have you just heard that,” said the blue-eyed girl, “He told _me_
about it a week ago—the day you said he was stupid, Emily. I knew at
the time that you would feel badly when you discovered that it was
only—er—grief for the death of his uncle, which made him so quiet and
thoughtful. Poor fellow, it must have been _such_ a shock to him!”
“How kind of you to comfort him in his sorrow,” said the brown-eyed
blonde, in sarcastic tones.
“Yes, dear—especially as he could have his choice of comforters. I
think you said that you, too, have a piece of news, Emily.”
“Why—er—yes, I heard that Effie Bittersweet is on the verge of nervous
prostration.”
The blue-eyed girl said never a word; she looked out of the window
opposite her, and there was a soft, sweet smile on her face. Perhaps
she failed to see the glances that were exchanged by the others.
“Oh, girls, have you heard the awful thing that happened to me
yesterday?” asked the girl with the eyeglasses. “No? Then, I had
better tell you all about it myself. I had an engagement with Harry;
we were to call on his aunt who lives in Rogers Park—nothing very
exciting, you know. Well, Mr. Doolittle came in early to ask me if I
wouldn’t go to the matinée with him. Now, I knew Harry would take me to
see his aunt any day, and Mr. Doolittle might never ask me to go to the
matinée again, so I accepted his invitation at once.”
“You would have been very stupid if you hadn’t,” said the president.
“So I thought. Then, I told him that I must stop in at the drug store
and send off a telephone message. You see, I didn’t want to give Harry
all the trouble of coming up in vain.”
“You are always so thoughtful,” said the blue-eyed girl.
“I try to be. I called Harry up, but he was not in, and I told the
office-boy to tell him that I was ill, and could not go with him to
Rogers Park, but hoped to be out in a day or two. The boy was as stupid
as he could be; I had to repeat the message twice, and even spell my
name. Oh, it was awful!”
“What? his stupidity?” asked the girl with the Roman nose.
“No; my own. As I was going out, the clerk stopped me, and said, ‘You
needn’t have taken all that trouble, Miss Marion; you were telephoning
to Mr. Vansmith, weren’t you? Well, that was he that just went out;
he was standing about three feet away from you all the time you were
trying to make the person at the other end of the line understand!’”
“Well, I hope your father is satisfied _now_,” said the president. “You
have been trying to get him to put in a telephone all winter.”
“Humph; you don’t know my father very well, dear. When I told him about
it, he only said that he was more fully satisfied than ever that women
were not to be trusted with telephones!”
“Then there was that horrid drug clerk,” said the girl with the dimple
in her chin; “why didn’t he stop you when Harry came in, instead of
letting you—”
“The fact is, that I knew he was trying to attract my attention all the
time, but I thought that it was only somebody else who wanted to use
the telephone in a hurry, and I took my own good time.”
“He might have known you would have done that,” said the girl with
the classic profile. “Girls, I often wonder why drug clerks are such
gloomy, misanthropic creatures?”
“Dear knows,” said the president; “I’ve often noticed it, though.
And how cross a clerk in a shoe store always is! Strange, too, when
they have such light, easy work. I tried on seventeen pairs of boots
only yesterday, and I never was so tired in all my life; yet I was as
amiable as possible, and the clerk, who had nothing to do but wait
on me, was so rude that I thought seriously of having the proprietor
in to hear of it. However, I compromised by going out without buying
anything.”
“It was very good of you, I’m sure,” said the blue-eyed girl. “You
know Marie sends to Paris for all her shoes. I never saw such beauties
in all my life as she wears.”
“H’m. I know she _says_ so,” returned the girl with the Roman nose,
“but—look here, if I tell you something, will you promise never to tell
it as long as you live? Well, then, I spent the day with Marie last
week. She had a lovely new pair of shoes, and I tried my best, without
asking directly, you know, to find the name of the Parisian boot-maker,
and how much she paid for them.”
“Of course you didn’t find out,” said the girl with the dimple in her
chin. “Marie can be as impervious to a hint as a man.”
“M’hm. Well, she got ready to go out with me, and just as we were ready
to start she was called out of the room. Her boots were all in the
closet, and I—well, somehow I just happened to be near the door, it was
ajar, and I stooped down to look at the maker’s name on them, when—oh,
girls, the door behind me suddenly flew open!”
“Oh, my goodness, it was Marie herself! What did—”
“No, it was the maid. She said: ‘Will you please tell Miss Marie, when
she comes in, that Cashly has sent up for the pair of boots she didn’t
take. The boy is waiting in the hall.’”
“Well, I never,” said the blue-eyed girl. “But I’ve always said that if
I sent to Paris for my boots I’d have better looking ones than _she_
gets!”
“But then Marie gets a great deal for her money, dear, even if the
boots themselves are not of a superior quality,” said the girl with the
eyeglasses.
“Very true. By the way, who went to Marie’s tea yesterday?” said the
girl with the dimple in her chin; “I did not. Since the founding of
this club I have cared less and less for gossip and society, and—”
“Then you didn’t mind not receiving an invitation to Marie’s after
all!” said the brown-eyed blonde. “I must tell her that. She said
yesterday that she didn’t expect you to speak to her for a month.”
“By the way,” said the girl with the Roman nose, hastily, “Dick made
rather a good suggestion yesterday. He said why not have a phonograph,
or even a stenographer, in the room while we are discussing a topic;
then we could have copies made, and—”
“That reminds me,” said the president, and she rapped loudly for order.
“Girls, do be quiet. We have a very important question to decide
to-day. A number of men have expressed a desire to become members of
this club, and—”
“I vote against it,” said the girl with the Roman nose. “We can all
express our real opinions now, knowing they will go no further,
whereas—”
“No club man can ever keep a secret,” broke in the girl with the dimple
in her chin. “As for us, we would die rather than divulge—”
“They are so curious, too,” broke in the girl with the classic profile.
“We have all talked so much about our meetings that they want to know
how they are conducted, that is all.”
“Yes, that is just it,” said the brown-eyed blonde, “and once in they
would spoil all the originality of it by having rules and all that.
Then they’d go away and say that we couldn’t get along without them.”
“The idea!” said the president, “when that’s the very reason I set our
time of meeting in the afternoon!”
“Look here,” said the girl with the eyeglasses, “of course we don’t
want to offend them. Why not have a ‘man’s day’ once in a while?”
“So we might,” said the president; “but we had better wait until we get
all our new things. Well, I suppose, since we are all agreed, that we
had better not waste time in voting on it. I’m awfully glad to see you
here, Elise; I was afraid you would not be able to come.”
“Oh, I was determined not to miss it,” said the girl with the Roman
nose. “I left word for them to tell the doctor I was asleep if he
called in my absence. I have been troubled with insomnia, you know, and
he would tell them not to disturb me. Of course, he gave me strict
orders not to go out, but he—”
“Will never know that,” said the brown-eyed blonde. “Oh, such a time as
I had last fall when I was ill! You see, papa was going to make me go
to Philadelphia to stay with old Aunt Borely. I—I was not very well,
anyhow, so I took to my bed.”
“Yes, and you had that nice young doctor, too,” said the girl with the
eyeglasses. “Oh, why am I so brutally healthy!”
“I did, and he cured me of my particular ailment,” went on the
brown-eyed blonde. “I had a most becoming light in the room the first
time he called, and what do you think he did? Pulled every window-shade
up to the top, until I looked a perfect fright—and he young enough to
know better!”
“Pshaw!” said the girl with the classic profile. “All doctors are
horrid. Why, I once had such a handsome one that he sent my pulse away
up every time he felt it. I did look so horrid that one day I—I put on
a little rouge just before he came. In consequence he said I had a
high fever, and put me on a milk-and-water diet for three days, besides
giving me—”
“Like the mean thing I had last year,” said the girl with the dimple in
her chin. “I had a cough, and wanted a trip to Florida; instead, I got
a pair of overshoes, a lot of flannels, and a mackintosh.”
“Of course,” said the girl with the Roman nose. “Well, I don’t believe
my doctor is a good one; he—”
“Is too ugly to be a really good one, anyhow,” broke in the blue-eyed
girl. “Fancy being delirious, and seeing that creature enter the room!”
“By the way,” said the girl with the dimple in her chin, “I wonder why
ugly men are always having their photographs taken and expecting one to
keep them hanging up where one can see them constantly!”
“Perhaps,” said the brown-eyed blonde, “they hope it may be a case of
“But seen too oft, familiar with its face,
We first endure, then pity, then”——
No, I don’t mean that,” she broke off, blushing.
“I should hope not,” said the blue-eyed girl, in shocked tones. “I
should be sorry to think that any member of this club—”
“The very queen of clubs,” broke in the president; “that is what Tom
calls it—when he is in a particularly good humor, I mean. I think we
had better adjourn now,” she added; “Elise really ought not to be
out late, and I am wild to tell Tom that men will not be admitted to
membership. Doesn’t the doctor do that pain in your chest any good,
Elise?”
“You don’t suppose that I told him anything about that, do you?” cried
the girl with the Roman nose. “I hope I am not so silly as that—with
Elizabeth’s wedding coming off in a week, and my lovely low-cut gown
all ready to wear to it!”
“Just wait one moment,” said the girl with the dimple in her chin. “I
haven’t got to-day’s topic down in my note-book. What did you say it
was, Evelyn?”
“Oh, my goodness!” cried the president, turning pale, “here we have
had a meeting, and I have forgotten to suggest any topic—and not one of
you thought to remind me of it! Oh, I am afraid that all my efforts to
advance you intellectually are wasted, after all!”
“Never mind,” said the girl with the eyeglasses, “this has been an
executive meeting, anyhow.”
“Why, so it has,” said the president, kissing her; “what a comfort you
are, Marion dear. Tom’s handsome cousin is coming home from Montana
next week with a lot of money, and you shall be the very first girl to
have an introduction to him!”
“Have you seen Jack Bittersweet lately?” asked the girl with the
eyeglasses, as she linked her arm in that of the girl with the dimple
in her chin, after the meeting had dissolved.
“Yes, he came to see me yesterday. I was in agony all the time he was
there, lest Dorothy come in. I knew she would never believe that it was
the first time he had done it since they quarreled!”
“Of course she wouldn’t. Did he ask your advice?”
“Yes. So does she—but neither of them take it.”
“You don’t expect that, I hope. Well, did you find out if he still
cares for her?”
“He does. I sat on the sofa, in my prettiest house-gown, and he took a
chair six feet away. He didn’t even tell me that fewer men would go to
the dogs if there were more women like me in the world!”
“Well, I only hope that they will soon come to their senses, that’s
all. Dorothy looks like a ghost, and as for Jack—”
“If they don’t,” cried the girl with the dimple in her chin, savagely,
“I shall just have to spend a month or two in a sanatarium. And I’m not
sure that that will save my life,” she added.