Lucile Triumphant Part 35

"TWO'S COMPANY"

Lucile was happy even before she awoke that morning. The sense of something delightful in store pervaded even her dreams. For a long time she lingered in that delightful interim between waking and sleeping, when the spirit seems to detach itself and fly on wings of golden suns.h.i.+ne through a dewy, scented universe. In her confused imagining she was resting on a rose-colored cloud, while all around her other clouds of varying tints swam and swirled, taking different shapes as they pa.s.sed her by.

"How pretty!" she murmured, and woke with a start to find Jessie regarding her sleepily.

"What on earth were you muttering about, Lucy?" cried the latter, fretfully. "I guess you must have been having a bad dream."

"No, it wasn't; it was beautiful," she contradicted, putting her hands behind her head and gazing up at the ceiling. "I wish you hadn't waked me up; I was having an awfully good time."

"Well, I wasn't," said Jessie, so sourly that Lucile chuckled.

"You know, Jessie," she said, "the only time you are ever cross is when you are sleepy--and that's most all the time," she added, wickedly.

"What?" said the accused, sitting up in bed and seizing Lucile by the arm. "Unsay those words or I will have your life!"

"Now, you know you don't need it half as much as I do," reasoned Lucile.

"You have one of your own." Whereupon Jessie laughed, and peace was almost restored when there came a knock at the door.

The girls started and looked at each other in questioning bewilderment.

"Now what have you been doing?" whispered Lucile. "I knew one of these days you would have the law upon us."

"Up to your old tricks again, I suppose," Jessie countered. "But you'd better answer them, Lucy."

"Why don't you?" said Lucile; but, receiving no answer, called out in a small voice, as the rap was repeated, "Who is it?"

"Aren't you girls ever going to get up?" whispered a gruff voice, which they, nevertheless, recognized as belonging to Phil. "It's almost eight o'clock and you said you'd be down by half-past seven. We've been waiting for half an hour."

"All right; we'll be down right away, Phil," said Lucile, jumping out of bed and beginning to dress hastily. "I had no idea it was so late."

"You know you won't have time for a walk before breakfast, even if you are down in half an hour--which I doubt," said Phil, pessimistically.

"Jack and I are going for our walk, anyway."

"Run along," sang Jessie, cheerfully, "and don't hurry back."

"You just wait till I get you, Jet," he threatened--Jet being a recent nickname to which he had clung despite Jessie's vehement protestations that the name would fit a Southern mammy a good deal better than it did her, for the simple reason that a darky was jet, but she wasn't nor ever would be.

"All right; only see that you pay enough," she a.s.sented. "I'm mercenary."

"I have always suspected something in your life, woman," he hissed through the keyhole. "Farewell!" And they heard his retreating footsteps on the stairs.

The girls laughed merrily, just as Evelyn, fully dressed, emerged from the next room--they always drew lots to see who slept together--looking very sweet and dainty in her spotless white.

"Hurry up, you old slow-pokes," she greeted them, gaily. "I've been up for ever so long. It's a wonderful day."

"Oh, Evelyn, dear, you look darling in that dress! I've never seen it before!" cried Lucile, enthusiastically. "Turn around in the back. Isn't it cute, Jessie? Goodness! You make me ashamed of myself!" And she began dressing with renewed vigor.

"Will you get dressed for me, too, Evelyn?" begged Jessie. "With so much energy flying around loose, I ought to catch some of it, but I don't. Oh, for another hour's sleep!"

"You don't have to get up," said Evelyn, sitting down on the edge of the bed. "You can sleep till noon if you want to, while Lucy and I have a look at the Capitol and dine at some nice little cafe----"

"Say not another word," commanded Jessie, bouncing out of bed and winding her long braids about her head. "I'd like to see anybody leave me behind.

Lucy, do get out of my way--I have to have the mirror some of the time!"

Lucile laughed. "All right; I'll fix my hair in Evelyn's room, now she's through, and let you have the whole place to yourself," she said, and gathering up hairpins and ribbons, she ran into the other room to finish up.

"What are you going to wear this morning, Lucy?" asked Evelyn, from the doorway, where she could see both girls at once.

"The little flowered one, I guess," said Lucile, struggling with her hair. "I haven't worn it yet and Dad raves about it."

"I wish you would wear the blue one," Evelyn suggested. "I think it's the prettiest thing you have."

"But I've worn it so much," Lucile objected. "I don't want to be known by my dress."

With apparent irrelevance, Jessie called out from the other room, "Jack loves blue."

Instead of looking confused, as she knew was expected of her, Lucile answered, readily. "I'll wear it then, of course. Phil likes blue, too."

Evelyn and Jessie exchanged glances and the latter laughed aggravatingly.

"Evelyn, what have you done with my tan shoes?" cried Jessie, searching wildly under the bed. "I'm sure I put them in their place, and they're nowhere to be seen," and she sat back on her heels to glare menacingly about her.

"Here they are," called Lucile from the other room. "You left them here last night. Hurry up! I'm all ready now."

They were pictures of youthful loveliness as they began to descend the stairs--Evelyn, in her snowy white, looking for all the world like a plump and mischievous little cherub, and Jessie in the palest pink, which set off and enhanced her fairness. But it was to Lucile that all eyes instinctively clung. The soft curls framing the lovely, eager face; the color that came and went with each varying emotion; the instinctive grace with which she carried her proud little head, won her admiration wherever she went.

All this, and more, Jack was thinking as he watched the trio descend. He and Phil were occupying a strategic position, from which they could see but not be seen; in fact, they had left the front door slightly ajar with that very end in view.

"It seems very strange," Lucile was saying as they reached the foot of the stairs, "that we haven't heard any breakfast bell. If it's as late as the boys say it is, everybody ought to be up."

Then she flung open the door and came upon the boys, seated on the railing of the veranda, apparently engrossed in conversation. The girls gasped with amazement at sight of the boys, and the boys gasped with very genuine admiration at sight of the girls.

"Wh-what----" began Lucile, bewildered. "I thought you and Phil were going for a walk."

"So we are," said Jack, easily. "We were only waiting for you."

"Phil," Lucile turned accusingly to her brother, "this is some trick you are trying to play on us. Why isn't there any breakfast and why aren't there any people. Come on, 'fess up!"

Jessie threw up her hands wearily. "We ought to know enough to suspect him by this time," she sighed. "But I guess we'll never get over being taken in."

"By the position of the sun," quoth Evelyn, "it ought to be about six thirty."

"Just about," Lucile corroborated. "No wonder we were sleepy."

All this time the boys had been regarding the victims of their deception with an a.s.sumption of innocence, made ineffective by the suppressed laughter in their eyes.

"Now I guess we're even for all the insults you've heaped upon my unoffending head in days gone by, Jet," Phil gibed. "Routing you up at six o'clock evens up for a lifetime."