“Your hair is looking lovely to-day,” returned the girl with the eyeglasses. “Look here, Frances, do, like a dear, tell me all about the quarrel. You know all about it, of course, and I’ll not tell a soul. You know how well I can keep a secret and, besides, you owe it to me, for you wouldn’t have known a thing about Fred and Clarissa but for me!” “But I hadn’t a thing to do about the quarrel, oh, really now I hadn’t. Of course, people think it was all on my account but—why, I was in Omaha when I heard of it.” “By the way you came back from Omaha earlier than you expected, didn’t you?” “I—no; that is only a week earlier. How well Jack looks, doesn’t he? And what a flow of spirits he has.” “Is it possible? Now, Effie says that he is as cross as a bear. But, then, Effie is his sister, so—” “What she says is of no consequence. Well, since you know so much already, I may as well tell you the rest. I fear that it is Dorothy’s insane jealousy of me which made the trouble. Of course I have not a spark of vanity, but I can’t help seeing—” “But I heard that the quarrel was over Jack’s membership in a new club.” “That might have been, dear, but people that are engaged don’t always quarrel over the real bone of contention. Of course, I only hope I really had nothing to do with it; I have so many such things on my conscience already that I don’t want any more,” and she sighed softly. “Yes, but tell me about the quarrel, do.” “Well—er—the fact is that Jack hasn’t said a word to me about it, which makes me quite sure that I am the cause of it, unwilling as I am to think it.” “Then, you really don’t know any of the facts?” said the girl with the eyeglasses. “Excuse me now, dear, I see Emily beckoning me; she wants to ask me about a new seamstress I’ve discovered. Frances doesn’t know a bit more than we do,” she whispered to the girl with the dimple in her chin. “Jack hasn’t told her a thing, so he evidently still cares for Dorothy, and she—” “That’s just it,” wailed the girl with the dimple in her chin. “I’d have succeeded in making it up long ago, if they didn’t care quite so much!” “Oh, dear,” said the president, “I am afraid that I am awfully stupid to-day, but the fact is that—” “By the way, I heard that you slept at a hotel last night, Evelyn,” said the girl with the Roman nose, “how on earth did that happen?” “It was all Tom’s fault,” returned the president, in an aggrieved tone, “only he, being a man, will not admit the fact. You see, he didn’t want to go to the reception at all, so he—” “But, Nell said she met him in the street and gave him a verbal invitation, which he accepted with effusion.” “Pshaw, if Nell knew my husband as well as I do, she’d be aware that the more affably he accepts an invitation, the more determined he is to escape by some plausible excuse at the last moment. He says that people always accept your regrets as genuine under such circumstances.”