Butit would take more than a mere matter of falling downstairs to put an end to the activities of Dodo and Paul. This they proved themselves, by coming up smiling and chuckling and very much alive at the foot of the stairs.
“Oh, you will be the death of me yet, you li’l rascals,” moaned Mrs. Billette, picking them up and feeling carefully over their small bodies to make sure that there were no bones broken. “I shall die of heart failure, if nothing else. Why will you not behave yourselves? Dodo, Paul, tell mother, are you hurt, darlings?”
Dodo and Paul regarded their mother and the girls in wide-eyed amazement at the fuss that was being made over them.
“Course, we’re not hurt,” said the little girl, rubbing a dimpled knee as though it had come in too hard contact with the edge of a stair. “Paul an’ me, we was runnin’ a race to see who could get downstairs first an’ Paul got in the way——”
“Den she pushed me,” said Paul, taking up the narrative in an injured tone. “I would have won de race only she pushed me. Wasn’t fair—”
“Was too,” interrupted Dodo, hotly. “You pushed me first, right up there at the head of the stairs an’ so I pushed you too.”
“Ooh,” said Paul, his eyes wide and injured. “Dodo Billette what a big story-teller——”
“Paul,” interrupted his mother sharply, “that will do. How many times have I told you that you must never call your little sister names?”
“Well, but she is,” insisted the round-eyed Paul, whereat his exasperated parent pushed him gently but very very firmly toward the front door.
“There, go outside, both of you,” she said. “And see if you can stop quarreling for five minutes. What have I done to have such terrible children!”
As the door closed upon the obstreperous twins she raised her hands in a typically French gesture and turned to the girls, despairingly.
“You see how it is,” she said, leading the way once more into the cool peace of the living-room. “Not five minutes in the day do they give me peace. Sometime I think I shall go mad.”
“Poor mother,” said Mollie, putting her arm about the little woman and seating her in theeasiest chair in the room. “I know they’re a dreadful pest, but just think how much worse it would be if you didn’t have them. Remember the time when they were kidnapped——”
But Mrs. Billette stopped her with a quick gesture.
“Do not remind me of that!” she commanded, sharply. “Have I not done my best to forget that dreadful time? But you do well to speak of it, after all, Mollie,” she said, more gently, patting Mollie’s hand. “It make me more contented to bear with them. They are very little yet and it is natural for children to be always in mischief.”
Those who are familiar with the Outdoor Girls will remember when the mischievous, adorable twins, Dodo and Paul, had been kidnapped by a villain who demanded an outrageous sum of money for their safe return and how the same twins had been rescued from a ship, wrecked on the rocks of Bluff Point near the cottage where the Outdoor Girls were summering. And it was true that whenever Mrs. Billette or Mollie were tempted to be impatient with the twins they remembered the despair of that dreadful time and dealt gently with the erring Dodo and Paul, aggravating little wretches that they could be.
“Just the same,” said Grace as, a few hourslater, the girls started for home and dinner, “I’d just as soon leave the twins behind when we go on our vacation.”
“Poor kiddies,” said Betty, with a twinkle in her eye. “Just think how they would enjoy themselves!”
“Yes,” retorted Grace, unmoved. “But just think how we would enjoy ourselves.”
“Speaking of our vacation,” said Mollie, who had agreed to walk as far as Betty’s house with her. “It seems as though things were just about settled for one grand and glorious time.”
“How about you, Grace?” asked Amy, as they paused at the corner before separating for their respective domiciles. “Do you suppose your folks will give you the O.K.?”
“Amy, what slang!” chuckled Betty. “If we don’t look out, you’ll be giving us points.”
“Impossible,” retorted Amy, at which Betty grinned still more.
“Why, yes, I guess,” said Grace, in reply to Amy’s question. “The folks will let me go anywhere as long as Will comes along.”
“Good gracious, are we going to let the boys in on this?” asked Mollie, wide-eyed.
“Did you ever know of a time we were able to keep the boys out—altogether?” retorted Grace, favoring Mollie with a pitying glance. “We’vetried it, haven’t we?” she added, as Mollie still stared at her.
“We-ell, not very hard,” said Betty, impishly, and, looking at her, the girls had to laugh.
“You’re enough to demoralize anybody, Betty Nelson,” said Mollie, giving her a hug. “You won’t even let us pretend we don’t want the boys.”
“I don’t see why we should pretend,” said Amy, boldly, flushing as the girls turned their laughing eyes upon her. “We always have a lot better time with them,” she persisted, and the Little Captain hugged her impulsively.
“Of course we do. Don’t let ’em tell you different,” she said gayly, then turned decidedly on her heel. “I don’t know about the rest of you,” she flung back at them over her shoulder, “but I do know I’ve got to be getting home. Mother will think I’m lost. Coming, Mollie?”
And so they parted, promising to get together on the morrow for a grand “pow-wow” and to make definite plans for their outing.
“Is Allen coming to-night, Betty?” asked Mollie of the Little Captain, as they stopped before Betty’s door.
“He said he was,” said Betty, lightly, adding ruefully: “And he left before I had a chance to contradict him.”
“Which of course you wanted to do,” teased Mollie, adding, soberly: “Have you noticed anything unusual about Allen, Betty?”
Betty looked startled, but her answer sounded indifferent enough.
“I haven’t had much of a chance to notice anything about him lately,” she said, but sharp little Mollie was not one whit deceived.
“He’s got something on his mind,” she said, thoughtfully. “Once or twice I’ve met him on the street and he was in such a hurry going somewhere that he didn’t even notice me. The last time I called after him and he stopped and apologized for not seeing me, just like a gentleman. But for all that, he was in a dreadfully big hurry to get away.”
“Just busy, I guess,” said Betty, adding, as she answered her mother’s call from within the house: “He’s getting to be terribly popular, you know.”
Although Betty had denied that she had noticed any change in Allen, in her own heart she knew that she had, and wondered what could be the matter. She ate her dinner absently and hurried through her dessert—it was a good one, too, plum cake with hard sauce—so that she might “pretty” herself before Allen arrived.
As she brushed her dark curls into some semblanceof order and regarded her flushed face in the mirror over her pretty dressing table, Betty reflected whimsically.
“And I was wondering,” she said, a little quirk at the corners of her mouth, “whether I should see him or not. It would really be better if I didn’t. It might teach him that he can’t stay away for a whole week without even ’phoning—” She paused and regarded her image thoughtfully.
Then, with a smile, she patted the last unruly lock of hair into place and went over to her closet to select the prettiest gown she had.
“And all the time,” she mused, “I knew I’d see him. I had to when he spoke in that tone. And he knew it too. Well,” with a sigh, “there isn’t any use worrying over it, I suppose.”
The dress she took from the hook was a fluffy organdie of that popular and becoming color known as “American beauty.” And when Betty slipped it over her dark head and stood once more before the mirror, the color of it miraculously matched the color in her cheeks. Betty—and the Little Captain was not at all conceited—was well satisfied with the effect.
Before she had quite finished putting the last touches to her pretty toilet she heard Allen talking and laughing with her father on the porch.
“It’s a wonder,” she thought, resentfully, “thathe can spare any time at all from that old business of his. I wonder,” she added, inconsistently, “if he will like my dress.”
As a matter of fact, it is doubtful if Allen really saw the dress at all. For he was staring straight at Betty and no dress, however lovely, could compete with Betty’s face when she looked as she looked to-night.
Mr. Nelson, enjoying an after-dinner cigar, noted the direction of the young lawyer’s glance and chuckled to himself. He liked Allen Washburn very much, and, strange as it may seem, he liked his pretty daughter even better. So it is very easy to see that everybody was happy.
After a while, like a very thoughtful and obliging parent, he went inside, ostensibly to play the phonograph, but really to ask proudly of his wife if Betty wasn’t the prettiest thing she ever saw.
To which Mrs. Nelson replied, that, though she hadn’t seen Betty yet to-night, she would agree, just on general principles, that she was.
“And the best of it is,” added the woman, softly, “Betty doesn’t know how lovely she is. She is just as sweet and unspoiled as she was at ten.”
“Let’s hope that she will always be so,” replied Betty’s father, gravely.
Meanwhile, out on the porch the last warm rays of the sun had given place to the soft summer twilight and Allen brought his chair closer to Betty’s so that he might watch the expression on her face. She was smiling a little, as though enjoying some joke that he could not share and he wondered if she were going to let him be serious. It was very seldom that she did.
“Are you laughing at me?” he asked, suddenly.
Betty’s face became, on the instant, demurely grave.
“How could you think it?” she murmured, looking up at him innocently. “What is there funny about you, Allen?”
“A good many things, I’ve come to believe,” answered Allen, ruefully. “At least, every time I see you, you seem amused.”
“I haven’t been amused very much lately then, have I?” she murmured, and once more Allen began to look savage.
“Stop it!” he said, and Betty looked at him, wide-eyed. Her mirth nearly bubbled over.
“Were you speaking to me?” she asked, and then at the look on his face she began to laugh and the more savage he looked the more she laughed.
Allen got up and walked to the other end ofthe porch. A moment later Betty’s voice, still choked with laughter, reached him.
“Allen, don’t be a goose,” she said. “Come here and talk to me. I won’t laugh. Truly I won’t.”
Allen came, still forbidding, and sat down beside her. He was quiet so long that she finally reopened the conversation.
“What’s the matter, Allen?” she asked, gently. “Are you worried about anything?”
At her changed tone he turned to her eagerly.
“Will you listen to me without laughing?”
There was a sparkle in Betty’s eyes but her lips were grave.
“Yes, anything you say,” she said, meekly.
Allen looked suspicious, but he went on, just the same.
“Thereissomething on my mind,” he said, so gravely that immediately Betty became grave too. “I’d like to tell you, little Betty, and then maybe you will realize why I haven’t been able to come around lately.”
“Tell me,” said Betty, softly.