A Flock of Girls and Boys | Page 3

making friends with that little plebeian yellow dog."
"And look at Dandy barking at everybody who isn't well dressed," laughed Tilly, pointing to a handsome collie, who was vigorously giving voice to his displeasure at the approach of a workman in shabby clothing.
The Robson girls and Will Wentworth joined in Tilly's laugh; but Agnes Brendon, who could never see a joke, looked disgusted, and glancing at the little yellow dog, asked petulantly,--
"Whose dog is it?"
"It belongs to the girl who sits at the corner table," answered Will Wentworth, "and its name is Pete. I heard the girl call him this morning."
"What a horrid, vulgar name!" exclaimed Agnes. "It suits the dog, though; and the people, I suppose, are--"
"Oh, Agnes, look at that horrid worm on your dress!"
Agnes jumped up in a panic, screaming, "Where, where?"
Dora, bending down to brush off the smallest of small caterpillars, whispered,--
"The girl who owns the yellow dog is in the other hammock. I just saw her, and she can hear every word you say."
"I don't care if she does hear," said Agnes, without troubling herself to lower her voice. "You needn't have frightened me with your horrid worm story, just for that."
Will Wentworth, as he heard this, fell backward into his reclining position, with an explosive laugh. The next minute he sprang out of the hammock, and, tucking "Jack Hall" under his arm, was up and off, giving a sidelong look as he went at the other hammock, which, though only a few rods away, was half hidden by the foliage of the two low-growing trees between which it hung. Meeting Tilly and the Robson girls as he ran around the corner of the house, he said breathlessly,--
"Look here; that girl must have heard everything that we've said."
"Well, there wasn't anything said that concerned her, until Agnes began about the yellow dog; and I stopped that," said Dora, gleefully.
"She may be acquainted with the Pelhams,--how do we know?" exclaimed Will, ruefully.
"The Pelhams!" cried Dora and Amy, in one breath.
"Yes, how do we know?" repeated Will.
"That girl who sits over at the corner table with that stuffy old woman, acquainted with the Pelhams! Oh, Will, if Agnes could hear you!" cried Dora, with a shout of laughter.
"Well, I can't see what there is to laugh at," broke in Will, huffily. "Why shouldn't she and the stuffy old woman, as you call her, know the Pelhams? She's a nice-looking girl, a first-rate looking girl. What's the matter with her?"
"Matter? I don't know that anything is the matter, except that she doesn't look like the sort of girl who would be an acquaintance of the Pelhams. She doesn't look like their kind, you know. She wears the plainest sort of dresses,--just little straight up and down frocks of brown or drab, or those white cambric things,--they are more like baby-slips than anything; and her hats are just the same,--great flat all-round hats, not a bit of style to them; and she's a girl of fourteen or fifteen certainly. Do you suppose people of the Pelhams' kind dress like that?"
Will gave a gruff little sound half under his breath, as he asked sarcastically,--
"How do people of the Pelham kind dress?"
"Oh, like Dora and Amy, and especially like Agnes,--in the height of the fashion, you know," Tilly cried laughingly.
"Now, Tilly," expostulated Dora, "neither Amy nor I overdress. We wear what all girls of our age--girls who are almost young ladies--wear, and I'm sure you wear the same kind of things."
"Not quite, Dora. I'll own, though, I would if I could; but there's such a lot of us at home that the money gives out before it goes all 'round," said Tilly, frankly, yet rather ruefully.
"I'm sure you look very nice," said Dora, politely. Amy echoed the polite remark, while Will, eying the three with an attempt at a critical estimate, thought to himself, "They don't look a bit nicer than that girl at the corner table."
But Will was too wise to give utterance to this thought. He knew how it would be received; he knew that the three would laugh at him and say, "What does a boy know about girl's clothes?"
In the mean time, while all this was going on, what was that girl who had suggested the talk, that girl who sat at the corner table in the dining room and who was now lying in a hammock,--what was she doing, what was she thinking?
CHAPTER II.
She was lying looking up through the green branches of the trees. She had been reading, but her book was now closed, and she was lying quietly looking up at the blue sky between the branches. Her thoughts were not quite so quiet as her position would seem to indicate. She had, as Will Wentworth had said, heard all that talk about the Pelhams.