"Oh, he wants me to wear my ring," she continued, with sudden rapidity: "and how the dickens CAN I when I can't even tell him it's been made into a pendant! He wants to speak to father; he wants to ANNOUNCE it. He's sold out his business for what he thinks is a good deal of money, and he wants me to marry him next month and take some miserable little trip, I don't know where, for a few weeks, before he invests what he's made in another business. Oh!" she cried. "It's a HORRIBLE thing to ask a girl to do: to settle down--just housekeeping, house-keeping, housekeeping forever in this stupid, stupid town! It's so unfair! Men are just possessive; they think it's loving you to want to possess you themselves. A beautiful `love'! It's so mean! Men!" She sprang up and threw out both arms in a vehement gesture of revolt. "Damn 'em, I wish they'd let me ALONE!"
Laura's eyes had lost their quiet; they showed a glint of tears, and she was breathing quickly. In this crisis of emotion the two girls went to each other silently; Cora turned, and Laura began to unfasten Cora's dress in the back.
"Poor Richard!" said Laura presently, putting into her mouth a tiny pearl button which had detached itself at her touch.
"This was his first evening in the overflow. No wonder he was troubled!"
"Pooh!" said Cora. "As if you and mamma weren't good enough for him to talk to! He's spoiled. He's so used to being called `the most popular man in town' and knowing that every girl on Corliss Street wanted to marry him----" She broke off, and exclaimed sharply: "I wish they would!
"Cora!"
"Oh, I suppose you mean that's the reason _I_ went in for him?"
"No, no," explained Laura hurriedly. "I only meant, stand still."
"Well, it was!" And Cora's abrupt laugh had the glad, free ring fancy attaches to the merry confidences of a buccaneer in trusted company.
Laura knelt to continue unfastening the dress; and when it was finished she extended three of the tiny buttons in her hand.
"They're always loose on a new dress," she said. "I'll sew them all on tight, to-morrow."
Cora smiled lovingly. "You good old thing," she said. "You looked pretty to-night."
"That's nice!" Laura laughed, as she dropped the buttons into a little drawer of her bureau. It was an ugly, cheap, old bureau, its veneer loosened and peeling, the mirror small and flawed--a piece of furniture in keeping with the room, which was small, plain and hot, its only ornamental adjunct being a silver-framed photograph of Mrs. Madison, with Cora, as a child of seven or eight, upon her lap.
"You really do look ever so pretty," asserted Cora.
"I wonder if I look as well as I did the last time I heard I was pretty," said the other. "That was at the Assembly in March.
Coming down the stairs, I heard a man from out of town say, `That black-haired Miss Madison is a pretty girl.' And some one with him said, `Yes; you'll think so until you meet her sister!'"
"You are an old dear!" Cora enfolded her delightedly; then, drawing back, exclaimed: "You KNOW he's gorgeous!" And with a feverish little ripple of laughter, caught her dress together in the back and sped through the hall to her own room.
This was a very different affair from Laura's, much cooler and larger; occupying half the width of the house; and a rather expensive struggle had made it pretty and even luxurious. The window curtains and the wall-paper were fresh, and of a quiet blue; there was a large divan of the same colour; a light desk, prettily equipped, occupied a corner; and between two gilt gas-brackets, whose patent burners were shielded by fringed silk shades, stood a cheval-glass six feet high. The door of a very large clothes-pantry stood open, showing a fine company of dresses, suspended from forms in an orderly manner; near by, a rosewood cabinet exhibited a delicate collection of shoes and slippers upon its four shelves. A dressing-table, charmingly littered with everything, took the place of a bureau; and upon it, in a massive silver frame, was a large photograph of Mr. Richard Lindley. The frame was handsome, but somewhat battered: it had seen service. However, the photograph was quite new.
There were photographs everywhere photographs framed and unframed; photographs large and photographs small, the fresh and the faded; tintypes, kodaks, "full lengths," "cabinets," groups--every kind of photograph; and among them were several of Cora herself, one of her mother, one of Laura, and two others of girls. All the rest were sterner. Two or three were seamed across with cracks, hastily recalled sentences to destruction; and here and there remained tokens of a draughtsman's over-generous struggle to confer upon some of the smooth-shaven faces additional manliness in the shape of sweeping moustaches, long beards, goatees, mutton-chops, and, in the case of one gen-tleman of a blond, delicate and tenor-like beauty, neck-whiskers;--decorations in many instances so deeply and damply pencilled that subsequent attempts at erasure had failed of great success. Certainly, Hedrick had his own way of relieving dull times.
