Four Girls at Chautauqua | Page 9

a face as she
had worn all the due. As for Eurie Mitchell, she took an entire seat, as
she did most other things, from pure heedlessness; any one was
welcome who wanted to sit with her, and whether it was a servant girl
or a princess was a matter of no moment. These various shades of
feeling were nearly as fully expressed in their faces as though they had
spoken; and yet they did not in the least comprehend their own actions.
This is only an illustration; it was so in a hundred little nothings during
the day. Not a window was raised or closed for their benefit, not a turn
of a blind made, that a close student of human nature could not have
seen the distinct and ruling differences in their temperaments, no matter

from what point of the compass they started. In the course of time they
reached East Buffalo.
"Now for our dinners!" Eurie said, as the whistle shrieked a warning
that the station was being neared. "What are we going to do?"
"We are going to eat them, I presume, as usual," Miss Erskine said in
her most indifferent tone. I should explain that long before this the girls
had grown weary of the separate seats, and by dint of much planning
and the good-natured removal of two fellow passengers to other seats
had accomplished an arrangement that should naturally have been
enjoyed from the beginning: that of a turned seat, and being their own
seat-mates.
"But I mean," Eurie said, in no wise quenched by what was a common
enough manner in Miss Erskine, "are we to get a lunch, or are we to go
in to a regular dinner?"
"If you mean what I am going to do, I shall most assuredly have a
'regular' dinner, as you call it. I have no fancy for eating things thrown
together in a bag."
"The bag will be the most economical process for all that," Eurie said,
laughing at Miss Erskine's disdainful face.
"I presume very likely; but as I did not start on this trip for the purpose
of studying social economy, I shall vote for the dinner."
"And I shall take to the bag method," Eurie said, decidedly. Opposition
always decided her. So it did Flossy, though in a different way; she was
sure to side with the stronger party.
"It would be pleasanter for us all to keep together," she began in a
doubtful tone, looking first at Miss Erskine and then at Eurie.
"But since, according to Eurie's and my decided differences, it is
impossible for us to do the 'better' thing, which of the two worse things
are you going to do?" This Miss Erskine said with utmost good nature,

but with utmost determination--as much as it would have taken to carry
out a good idea in the face of opposition.
"Oh, I think I'll go with you." Flossy said it hastily, as if she feared that
she might appear foolish in the eyes of this young lady by having
fancied anything else.
"Very well--then it remains for Marion to choose her company," Eurie
said, composedly.
Marion held up a paper bundle.
"It is already chosen," she said, promptly. "It is a slice of bread and
butter, with a very thin slice of fat ham, which I never eat, and a greasy
doughnut, the whole done up in a brown paper. This is decidedly an
improvement on the bag dinner (which you think of going after) in an
economical point of view; and as I am a student of social and all other
sorts of economy, not only on this trip but on every other trip of mine
in this mortal life, I recommend it to you; at least I would have done so
if you had asked me this morning before you left home."
Eurie made a grimace.
"I might have brought a splendid lunch from home if I had only thought
of such a thing," she said, regretfully. "My thoughts always come
afterward."
"And it is quite the mode to take lunches with you when they are
elegantly put up," Flossy said, regretfully, as she prepared to follow
Ruth. "I wonder we never thought of it."
This last remark of Flossy's set the two girls left behind into a hearty
laugh.
"Do you suppose that when Flossy has to die she will be troubled lest it
may not be the fashion for young ladies to die that season?" Eurie said,
looking after the pretty little doll as she gathered her skirts about her
anxiously; for, whatever other qualifications East Buffalo may have,

cleanliness is not one of them.
"No," Marion answered, gravely, "not the least danger of it, because it
happens to be the fashion for ladies to die at