Four Girls at Chautauqua | Page 9

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 all seasons; it is the one thing that never seems to go out. I am heartily glad that we have one thing that remains absolute in this fashionable world."
Eurie looked at her thoughtfully.
"Marion, one would think you were religious--sometimes," she said, gravely. "You make such strange remarks."
Marion laughed immoderately.
"You ridiculous little infidel!" she said, as soon as she could speak. "You do not even know enough about religion to detect the difference between goodness and wickedness. Why, that was one of my wickedest remarks, and here you are mistaking it for goodness. My dear child, run and get your paper bag before it is time to go; or will you have my slice of ham and half this doughnut? The bread and butter I want myself."
The freshness and novelty of this journey wore away before the long summer afternoon began to wane; the cars were crowded and uncomfortable, and the cinders flew about in as trying a way as cinders