Elsie Marley, Honey | Page 3

hair cut square about her ears who had travelled alone all the way from San Francisco and seemed to know every one in the car. If she should give her any encouragement, no doubt she would hang about her all the rest of the way. She excused herself coldly.
"Oh, please do, please come for just a wee turn," urged the other, smiling and displaying a pair of marvellous dimples. And Elsie Marley surprised herself by yielding. Possibly she was too indolent to hold out; perhaps she felt something in the stranger that wouldn't take no for an answer, and didn't care to struggle against it. Again, she may have felt, dimly and against her will, something of the real charm of the other. However that was, she yielded listlessly, put on her neat sailor hat reluctantly, drew on the jacket of her severe and elegant dark-blue suit, and followed the stranger slowly from the car.
CHAPTER II
The stranger, who was dressed in a rather graceful and perhaps rather flamboyant adaptation of the prevailing fashion, was picturesque and radiant to the extreme: slender, dark, vivid, with big, dark eyes in a small pointed face, dark hair "bobbed" and curling sufficiently to turn under about her ears and neck, a rather large mouth flanked by really extraordinary dimples, and an expression at once gay and saucy and sweet and appealing withal. Her voice was very sweet, her unusually finished pronunciation and enunciation giving a curious effect to her slangy speech. She wore her clothes jauntily, carried herself with charming grace, and her great dimples made her frank smile irresistible.
"Do you know, I've been simply crazy all the way to come and speak to you," she confessed as soon as they were outside. "I spotted you the very first thing, but I was rather phased by that woman with you. Wasn't she the--goodness gracious! I hope she wasn't any relation--your aunt or mother?"
"Oh, no indeed, scarcely an acquaintance," returned the other, surprised that any one should even conjecture that Mrs. Bennet might be connected with her. Then it occurred to her that Cousin Julia might be even worse!
"I never met her until a week ago," she went on languidly. "She happened to be a friend of my lawyer's wife, and he wished me to come as far as I could in her company. I suppose I oughtn't to travel the rest of the way alone, but he didn't make any other arrangement."
"Oh, it isn't bad. I've come all the way alone and everything's been jolly. I've made awfully good friends, though they're all either elderly or children. So your being about my age only made me want to know you the more. Well, now that we're acquainted, we'll have to make the most of what's left of the way. I am Elsie Moss and I was sixteen Christmas day. Aren't you about that age?"
"I am sixteen, Miss Moss," returned Elsie Marley formally.
"But don't call me Miss," pleaded the other. "Everybody calls me Elsie."
Elsie Marley did not reply. She disliked the idea that the unchaperoned stranger should be Elsie, also, and should even have the same initials. Her imagination was limited; still it occurred to her that the situation would have been much worse had the girl happened to bear the surname Pritchard.
She stifled a sigh. They seemed to be getting acquainted perforce. Now that she was out, however, she didn't care to go back at once, even though the sun beat down upon them fiercely, and the dry grass was full of dust and cinders. She glanced about irresolutely.
"Now if this were a scene in a play," remarked Elsie Moss reflectively, "the engine would have broken down near a grove with immemorial trees, or there'd be a dell hard by where the hero and heroine could wander by a stream. Or else--" she hesitated. "You don't feel comfy, do you?"
"The sun is so hot, it's hardly safe to be out. I'd better go in again," replied the other.
"But the car'll be awfully hot, too, standing right in the sun. I know--I'll get an umbrella."
She rushed off at full speed lest the other should remonstrate--something that Elsie Marley didn't think of doing. She accepted the favor as a matter of course, and they walked on slowly, the one restraining her eager feet with difficulty.
"Oh, dear, I suppose you're going to New York, too?" she asked. "Everybody seems to be except poor me."
The other returned a spiritless affirmative.
"Of course! Oh, dear, and I'm simply perishing to go! But I'm due in a poky little place in Massachusetts called Enderby. Isn't that the limit? The name alone would queer the place, don't you think so? It's fairly near Boston, but they say Boston's slow compared with New York or even with San Francisco."
She waited a moment, then