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Teacup Club (Dramatic Reading)

[185] <h2>Chapter VIII An Executive Meeting</h2> “Why, Frances, is that you? And on your way to the Club, too,” cried the blue-eyed girl, as she caught up with the brown-eyed blonde, “how lucky I am; I shall have a nice long talk with you as we go along! How well you are looking to-day, quite fresh, I declare! Dear me, I should have put on my gloves before I left home, but I was in such haste that—” “By the way, Dorothy, it seems to me that you are not wearing as many rings as usual this winter. Surely, I miss the diamond you used to wear!” “Why, no I’m not; so much jewelry is always vulgar, and rings are so hard on one’s gloves. Mercy, we have walked a whole block, and you haven’t told me a bit of news!”[186] “Haven’t I? By the way, I heard Ja—a man I know, say something about you yesterday which was quite a surprise. I don’t really know whether I ought to repeat it, or not.” “Oh, he wouldn’t have said it before you unless he expected you to repeat it, dear. You must tell me what it is, or I shall fancy it was not really unpleasant, and, really I’ve had so many compliments of late that it will be quite a change. I am actually afraid that Cla—a friend who thinks too well of me—will make me vain, and that—” “Impossible, dear. By the way, I hear that Clarence Lighthed comes to see you occasionally now, and—” “Not oftener than once in twenty-four hours, dear.” “Yes. And really he has been so devoted to so many girls that—” “It is a wonder that he has never thought of you! Why so it is, now that I think of it. But never mind, there may be a chance for you yet. Pardon me, you were about[187] to repeat something you had heard about me, and I’m afraid I interrupted you.” “Was I? Dear me, I have quite forgotten what it was; nothing very important, I’m sure.” “Very true. By the way, I heard something about you the other day, too. It was extremely complimentary—so much so indeed, that you will think I am trying to flatter you, if I repeat it.” “Indeed? Oh, I remember now what I was about to tell you. It was—so you really heard something nice about poor little me?” “Yes, I really did. I’ll tell you after you have finished your story. I really must not interrupt you again.” “Yes, Ja—I mean the man I know—said the other day that he thought you—now you mustn’t mind this, at all, Dorothy; I told him at once that nobody else had ever said such a thing of you.” “How kind of you to champion me, dear; I really did not expect it.” “Oh, yes; I often do it. He said—I[188] wouldn’t repeat it to you, but the absurdity of the charge takes all the sting out of it. He said, ‘I consider Dorothy Darling the most heartless flirt I ever knew!’ Isn’t it too funny!” and she burst into a peal of laughter. The blue-eyed girl paused to pat a little dog before she replied: “How well you do tell a story, Frances, dear. Look at that poor, old blind man over yonder; let us cross over and give him some pennies,” and she was almost dancing as she crossed the street. “Perhaps he is an impostor, after all,” said the brown-eyed blonde. “By the way, you said somebody paid me a nice compliment the other day. Do tell me what it was, and if I ever get the chance—be it twenty years from now—I’ll do the same for you.” “Oh, yes, indeed. Old Miss Lucy Brownsmith said to me, only the other day, ‘Really, Frances is quite a nice-looking girl now that she has given up lacing so tightly.’ I knew you would be so pleased.[189] Well, here we are at the Club; I am afraid that I must have walked too fast for you, dear; you look quite flushed.” “Oh, Emily, dear,” she whispered, as she embraced her friend in the cloak room, “Jack is wild with jealousy! He told Frances the other day that I was the most heartless flirt he ever knew!” “Then, he is ready to go half-way toward making up! Oh, I am so glad that I—” “Half-way? Do you suppose, Emily Marshmallow, that after allowing Clarence Lighthed to bore me almost to death for two weeks, I shall be willing to go half-way to make up with Jack?” “But you said the other day that unless you did make up with him, you would learn to be a trained nurse and devote your life to others, and I thought—” “Never mind what I said the other day—that was before I knew how jealous Jack was. And all I’ve got to say, is this: if you expect me to make a fright of myself in a gray cloak and bonnet and cotton[190] gown just to please you, you are very much mistaken!” The girl with the eyeglasses put her head in at the door, “Come into the club-room right away, girls,” she said. “Evelyn is here, and she has something of the greatest importance to tell us.” The president was evidently excited as she called the meeting to order. “I am just as angry as I can be,” she said. “What do you think I found in my mail to-day? A letter from a man who is old enough to know better, suggesting a topic for discussion by this club. That topic was, ‘The Best Method of Keeping the Hat on Straight.’” “You don’t say so!” said the girl with the Roman nose. “Well, it only shows that our mental advancement has made him uneasy.” “Of course,” said the president. “Then, as if that was not enough, he suggests a small mirror fastened to the inside of an umbrella or parasol as—” “Pshaw!” said the brown-eyed blonde,[191] “a highly polished silver handle answers the same purpose and attracts less attention.” “Talk about hats,” said the girl with the classic profile, “men are just as fussy about their own. Did you ever see anybody put on a man’s hat to suit him?” “Never,” said the president. “I had an awful time when Tom’s arm was broken. I would put on his hat as carefully as I could—he always would tip it too far back himself—and yet, each time he would remove it, look suspiciously into the crown, and put it on again himself.” “As if it makes any difference how a man looks, anyhow,” said the girl with the eyeglasses. “So long as they are nice and generous, no girl cares—” “Very true,” broke in the girl with the dimple in her chin, “and it is frequently the pocket of a last year’s overcoat which harbors the largest box of candy.” “I should like to know how a man manages to keep his hat on without veil or pins,” said the girl with the Roman nose. “He doesn’t always do it in a high[192] wind,” said the girl with the classic profile. “And yet he always wonders why a woman holds her hat on when she is driving,” remarked the girl with the dimple in her chin. “You know what a fuss men always make about big theater hats,” said the president. “Well, thinking to please Tom, I got a tiny bonnet, which was so becoming that it attracted as much attention as a regular mountain of feathers and velvet.” “And wasn’t he pleased?” asked the girl with the eyeglasses. “Not when the bill came in, and he found that it cost rather more than a large hat. I said that he ought to be content to pay for the principle of a thing. He replied that it looked as if the interest was all about all he could afford. I suppose he thought that was sarcastic.” “Men have such queer ideas of humor, anyhow,” said the girl with the dimple in her chin; “why, I know a man who once laughed heartily at a joke on himself.”[193] “Perhaps he owed money to the man who made it, or wanted his vote for something,” said the girl with the classic profile. “Well, I’d like to know who first invented hat-pins,” said the brown-eyed blonde. “I am sure it was not a woman, because—” “It was a man, and he was either an old bachelor or a bigamist,” said the girl with the Roman nose. “I had two pins running straight into my scalp all during service on Sunday. Dick was with me, too, and it was so hard to look saintly when—” “Men always ask why we don’t tie our hats on, when we complain of pins,” said the girl with the dimple in her chin. “Wouldn’t we look nice with our jaws tied up like those of a small boy with the toothache?” “To say nothing of having our hearing so impaired that we couldn’t be sure whether compliments whispered into our ears were intended for us or were merely remarks made about other girls,” said the brown-eyed blonde.[194] “Well, girls,” said the president, “I see you all resent it, as I do; and I’m just going to write that horrid man a letter telling him that the Teacup Club has too many serious topics to discuss to waste time upon anything relating to millinery.” “Speaking of millinery,” said the blue-eyed girl, “did you ever see anything as sweet as the new hats! I went with Elizabeth to select the ones for her trousseau the other day, and it did seem hard to me that a girl only has a chance once in her life to buy as many hats as she really wants, and—” “Not to mention the fact that it is just at the time when she is so much interested in her future husband that she can’t give her whole mind to the subject,” broke in the girl with the eyeglasses. “Now, if she could only choose her trousseau a year after her marriage, instead of before.” “Yes; or even six months,” said the president. “Well, my new hat must cost five dollars less than I had hoped. I borrowed that amount from Tom last month;[195] and—will you believe it?—he took it out of my allowance for this month, in spite of the fact that I told him I had spent it for his birthday present.” “But why didn’t you take it out of your housekeeping allowance? You usually do,” said the girl with the Roman nose. “Because I had already taken enough for a half-dozen pairs of gloves out of that. It happened that he had not given a single stag dinner during the month, so I could not filch too much without discovery. When he gives a dinner, I can always pay myself well for the trouble of it. If he complains of the bills, I just say, ‘Yes, dear, I see that we cannot afford any more stag dinners,’ and that settles it at once,” she added. “I should think it would,” said the blue-eyed girl, thoughtfully. “Did you tell Tom how mean you thought it of him to expect you to pay back money that you had borrowed?” “I did. I said, ‘I wouldn’t be as selfish as you are for anything!’”[196] “And did that make him feel badly? I should think so.” “Not a bit. You don’t know Tom; he just laughed as if it was funny. Luckily, I had given him a silk umbrella for his birthday, and as he has two already, and this one is—er rather small, I shall get a good deal of use out of it myself.” “And you hadn’t one at all, had you?” said the girl with the dimple in her chin. “I remember the day you lost yours.” “Yes. Wasn’t it nice of me to buy one for him when I really needed it for myself? But one can’t expect a man to appreciate generosity.” “Oh, girls,” said the girl with the dimple in her chin, “what do you think I heard to-day?” “I don’t know what you heard,” said the girl with the Roman nose, “but I heard that Clarence Lighthed has just inherited a fortune from an uncle whom he had never seen! You know he is my cousin, and—” “Have you just heard that,” said the blue-eyed girl, “He told me about it a[197] week ago—the day you said he was stupid, Emily. I knew at the time that you would feel badly when you discovered that it was only—er—grief for the death of his uncle, which made him so quiet and thoughtful. Poor fellow, it must have been such a shock to him!” “How kind of you to comfort him in his sorrow,” said the brown-eyed blonde, in sarcastic tones. “Yes, dear—especially as he could have his choice of comforters. I think you said that you, too, have a piece of news, Emily.” “Why—er—yes, I heard that Effie Bittersweet is on the verge of nervous prostration.” The blue-eyed girl said never a word; she looked out of the window opposite her, and there was a soft, sweet smile on her face. Perhaps she failed to see the glances that were exchanged by the others. “Oh, girls, have you heard the awful thing that happened to me yesterday?” asked the girl with the eyeglasses. “No?[198] Then, I had better tell you all about it myself. I had an engagement with Harry; we were to call on his aunt who lives in Rogers Park—nothing very exciting, you know. Well, Mr. Doolittle came in early to ask me if I wouldn’t go to the matinée with him. Now, I knew Harry would take me to see his aunt any day, and Mr. Doolittle might never ask me to go to the matinée again, so I accepted his invitation at once.” “You would have been very stupid if you hadn’t,” said the president. “So I thought. Then, I told him that I must stop in at the drug store and send off a telephone message. You see, I didn’t want to give Harry all the trouble of coming up in vain.” “You are always so thoughtful,” said the blue-eyed girl. “I try to be. I called Harry up, but he was not in, and I told the office-boy to tell him that I was ill, and could not go with him to Rogers Park, but hoped to be out in a day or two. The boy was as stupid as[199] he could be; I had to repeat the message twice, and even spell my name. Oh, it was awful!” “What? his stupidity?” asked the girl with the Roman nose. “No; my own. As I was going out, the clerk stopped me, and said, ‘You needn’t have taken all that trouble, Miss Marion; you were telephoning to Mr. Vansmith, weren’t you? Well, that was he that just went out; he was standing about three feet away from you all the time you were trying to make the person at the other end of the line understand!’” “Well, I hope your father is satisfied now,” said the president. “You have been trying to get him to put in a telephone all winter.” “Humph; you don’t know my father very well, dear. When I told him about it, he only said that he was more fully satisfied than ever that women were not to be trusted with telephones!” “Then there was that horrid drug clerk,” said the girl with the dimple in her chin;[200] “why didn’t he stop you when Harry came in, instead of letting you—” “The fact is, that I knew he was trying to attract my attention all the time, but I thought that it was only somebody else who wanted to use the telephone in a hurry, and I took my own good time.” “He might have known you would have done that,” said the girl with the classic profile. “Girls, I often wonder why drug clerks are such gloomy, misanthropic creatures?” “Dear knows,” said the president; “I’ve often noticed it, though. And how cross a clerk in a shoe store always is! Strange, too, when they have such light, easy work. I tried on seventeen pairs of boots only yesterday, and I never was so tired in all my life; yet I was as amiable as possible, and the clerk, who had nothing to do but wait on me, was so rude that I thought seriously of having the proprietor in to hear of it. However, I compromised by going out without buying anything.” “It was very good of you, I’m sure,”[201] said the blue-eyed girl. “You know Marie sends to Paris for all her shoes. I never saw such beauties in all my life as she wears.” “H’m. I know she says so,” returned the girl with the Roman nose, “but—look here, if I tell you something, will you promise never to tell it as long as you live? Well, then, I spent the day with Marie last week. She had a lovely new pair of shoes, and I tried my best, without asking directly, you know, to find the name of the Parisian boot-maker, and how much she paid for them.” “Of course you didn’t find out,” said the girl with the dimple in her chin. “Marie can be as impervious to a hint as a man.” “M’hm. Well, she got ready to go out with me, and just as we were ready to start she was called out of the room. Her boots were all in the closet, and I—well, somehow I just happened to be near the door, it was ajar, and I stooped down to look at the maker’s name on them, when—oh, girls, the door behind me suddenly flew open!”[202] “Oh, my goodness, it was Marie herself! What did—” “No, it was the maid. She said: ‘Will you please tell Miss Marie, when she comes in, that Cashly has sent up for the pair of boots she didn’t take. The boy is waiting in the hall.’” “Well, I never,” said the blue-eyed girl. “But I’ve always said that if I sent to Paris for my boots I’d have better looking ones than she gets!” “But then Marie gets a great deal for her money, dear, even if the boots themselves are not of a superior quality,” said the girl with the eyeglasses. “Very true. By the way, who went to Marie’s tea yesterday?” said the girl with the dimple in her chin; “I did not. Since the founding of this club I have cared less and less for gossip and society, and—” “Then you didn’t mind not receiving an invitation to Marie’s after all!” said the brown-eyed blonde. “I must tell her that. She said yesterday that she didn’t expect you to speak to her for a month.”[203] “By the way,” said the girl with the Roman nose, hastily, “Dick made rather a good suggestion yesterday. He said why not have a phonograph, or even a stenographer, in the room while we are discussing a topic; then we could have copies made, and—” “That reminds me,” said the president, and she rapped loudly for order. “Girls, do be quiet. We have a very important question to decide to-day. A number of men have expressed a desire to become members of this club, and—” “I vote against it,” said the girl with the Roman nose. “We can all express our real opinions now, knowing they will go no further, whereas—” “No club man can ever keep a secret,” broke in the girl with the dimple in her chin. “As for us, we would die rather than divulge—” “They are so curious, too,” broke in the girl with the classic profile. “We have all talked so much about our meetings that they want to know how they are conducted, that is all.”[204] “Yes, that is just it,” said the brown-eyed blonde, “and once in they would spoil all the originality of it by having rules and all that. Then they’d go away and say that we couldn’t get along without them.” “The idea!” said the president, “when that’s the very reason I set our time of meeting in the afternoon!” “Look here,” said the girl with the eyeglasses, “of course we don’t want to offend them. Why not have a ‘man’s day’ once in a while?” “So we might,” said the president; “but we had better wait until we get all our new things. Well, I suppose, since we are all agreed, that we had better not waste time in voting on it. I’m awfully glad to see you here, Elise; I was afraid you would not be able to come.” “Oh, I was determined not to miss it,” said the girl with the Roman nose. “I left word for them to tell the doctor I was asleep if he called in my absence. I have been troubled with insomnia, you know, and he would tell them not to disturb me.[205] Of course, he gave me strict orders not to go out, but he—” “Will never know that,” said the brown-eyed blonde. “Oh, such a time as I had last fall when I was ill! You see, papa was going to make me go to Philadelphia to stay with old Aunt Borely. I—I was not very well, anyhow, so I took to my bed.” “Yes, and you had that nice young doctor, too,” said the girl with the eyeglasses. “Oh, why am I so brutally healthy!” “I did, and he cured me of my particular ailment,” went on the brown-eyed blonde. “I had a most becoming light in the room the first time he called, and what do you think he did? Pulled every window-shade up to the top, until I looked a perfect fright—and he young enough to know better!” “Pshaw!” said the girl with the classic profile. “All doctors are horrid. Why, I once had such a handsome one that he sent my pulse away up every time he felt it. I did look so horrid that one day I—I put on a little rouge just before he came. In consequence[206] he said I had a high fever, and put me on a milk-and-water diet for three days, besides giving me—” “Like the mean thing I had last year,” said the girl with the dimple in her chin. “I had a cough, and wanted a trip to Florida; instead, I got a pair of overshoes, a lot of flannels, and a mackintosh.” “Of course,” said the girl with the Roman nose. “Well, I don’t believe my doctor is a good one; he—” “Is too ugly to be a really good one, anyhow,” broke in the blue-eyed girl. “Fancy being delirious, and seeing that creature enter the room!” “By the way,” said the girl with the dimple in her chin, “I wonder why ugly men are always having their photographs taken and expecting one to keep them hanging up where one can see them constantly!” “Perhaps,” said the brown-eyed blonde, “they hope it may be a case of <div class="poetry-container"> <div class="poetry"> <div class="verse">“But seen too oft, familiar with its face,</div> <div class="verse">We first endure, then pity, then”—— </div> </div></div> [207]No, I don’t mean that,” she broke off, blushing. “I should hope not,” said the blue-eyed girl, in shocked tones. “I should be sorry to think that any member of this club—” “The very queen of clubs,” broke in the president; “that is what Tom calls it—when he is in a particularly good humor, I mean. I think we had better adjourn now,” she added; “Elise really ought not to be out late, and I am wild to tell Tom that men will not be admitted to membership. Doesn’t the doctor do that pain in your chest any good, Elise?” “You don’t suppose that I told him anything about that, do you?” cried the girl with the Roman nose. “I hope I am not so silly as that—with Elizabeth’s wedding coming off in a week, and my lovely low-cut gown all ready to wear to it!” “Just wait one moment,” said the girl with the dimple in her chin. “I haven’t got to-day’s topic down in my note-book. What did you say it was, Evelyn?” “Oh, my goodness!” cried the president,[208] turning pale, “here we have had a meeting, and I have forgotten to suggest any topic—and not one of you thought to remind me of it! Oh, I am afraid that all my efforts to advance you intellectually are wasted, after all!” “Never mind,” said the girl with the eyeglasses, “this has been an executive meeting, anyhow.” “Why, so it has,” said the president, kissing her; “what a comfort you are, Marion dear. Tom’s handsome cousin is coming home from Montana next week with a lot of money, and you shall be the very first girl to have an introduction to him!” “Have you seen Jack Bittersweet lately?” asked the girl with the eyeglasses, as she linked her arm in that of the girl with the dimple in her chin, after the meeting had dissolved. “Yes, he came to see me yesterday. I was in agony all the time he was there, lest Dorothy come in. I knew she would never believe that it was the first time he had done it since they quarreled!”[209] “Of course she wouldn’t. Did he ask your advice?” “Yes. So does she—but neither of them take it.” “You don’t expect that, I hope. Well, did you find out if he still cares for her?” “He does. I sat on the sofa, in my prettiest house-gown, and he took a chair six feet away. He didn’t even tell me that fewer men would go to the dogs if there were more women like me in the world!” “Well, I only hope that they will soon come to their senses, that’s all. Dorothy looks like a ghost, and as for Jack—” “If they don’t,” cried the girl with the dimple in her chin, savagely, “I shall just have to spend a month or two in a sanatarium. And I’m not sure that that will save my life,” she added. <hr class="chap" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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