CHAPTER TEN ITS AFTERMATH The day after great festivities is a trying time. Everybody feels mentally out-at-elbows; it is a day like those fifteen minutes between the ebb and flow of the tide when the waters seem to lie motionless. No one feels like ordinary duties, and there is a general impression that they may be neglected, though it is not avowed. It takes a day for energies to wake up and get into harness. The boys had set out early in their workaday tweeds for college and business. Velvets, queues, laced hats and swords discarded for the commonplace, the girls' partners in the gavotte had been forced back to the actual world with the wintry dawn, but the girls revelled in reminiscent laziness and the joys of "talking it over." Hester had stayed till an afternoon train, and she lay across the foot of Wythie and Rob's bed, her mind vibrating like a pendulum between the events of the preceding night and their results, between recalling some little point which had not been mentioned, and wondering how many cripple children they would now be able to afford. Wythie lolled in the rocking-chair in a relaxed attitude unlike her usual compact little self. Rob reclined on her elbow beside Hester, with her unruly hair tumbled into the many ringed disorder in which it was always prettiest, and most comfortable. Prue, who was staying home from school that day in charitable allowance of time in which to descend from her pedestal and readjust her mind to study, sat on the edge of the bed at its head with the pillow whose place she occupied "laid as tenderly across her knees as if it were one of the cripples," Rob said. "One might think there wasn't a chair in the room," remarked Wythie languidly, as she glanced at the unused ones standing about. "I wonder why all girls love to pile on a bed together?" "They like to be on a bed because it suits 'a rosebud garden of girls,'" suggested Rob. "That seems to lack the suggestion of a garden bed that I was aiming for--as a pun it is a failure. Confidences and caramels are best enjoyed on a bed, among pillows. Please pass me another caramel, Hester, and let me see your Christmas ring again. I like emeralds!" "Speaking of rings," said Hester as she complied, "I wonder if I am betraying confidence in telling you what Lester said?" "You might try it and see," said Rob. "We'll tell you frankly after you have repeated it whether or not it is a betrayal of confidence." Hester laughed. "I'll risk it," she said. "Lester has taken a great fancy to Frances Silsby, and he says he is seriously going to try to make her care for him. He is in business with his father, representing the Japanese end of the firm, as his older brother represents it in London, so he would be able to think of marrying as far as being established in the world goes." "Marrying!" cried Prue, dropping both hands into the pillow with a thump as she sat erect in her surprise. "Do you mean to say he is going to marry Francie right off?"