“What utter nonsense. Of course women can keep secrets! Why, I once knew a girl intimately for two whole years and in all that time she never told me that her curls were false. I wouldn’t have known it to this day, if I hadn’t walked into her room one day when she had washed them and hung them up to dry. I’ve told that story to a dozen men, and I’ve never yet found one of them magnanimous enough to acknowledge that it proved my point!” “You can’t prove anything to a man, dear, unless he wants it proved. Well, I must go. You’ll not fail me at the first meeting of the Teacup club, then?” “The Teacup club,” said the girl with the dimple in her chin, disappointedly, “Why I thought it was to be a really intellectual club, and—” “So it is. But, you know, real merit is always modest. If a lot of men get up such a thing, they give it a six-syllabled name; but we wish to evade, rather than seek, notoriety and, besides, as I said before, once we get it started, the whole town will talk of nothing else!” It fell upon a bright sunshiny day, and the meeting for the organization of the Teacup club was well attended. “And all the girls are wearing their newest gowns, too,” whispered the blue-eyed girl to the girl with the dimple in her chin, “that shows that they appreciate the importance of the undertaking.” “And what an awfully becoming hat you are wearing,” said the girl with the dimple in her chin. “If I owned such a milliner’s dream I should not mind anything that could happen to me.” “Which means that you have something unpleasant to tell me,” said the blue-eyed girl. “You need not be uneasy,” she added, “I’ll not move a muscle, for Frances is looking this way.” “Well, then, I heard her tell Nell that Jack comes to her almost every day for sympathy and—” “Humph. When a man says ‘sympathy’ he means flattery! Is that all?” “All? Why I thought—” “Yes, dear. You see, I thought perhaps you had stronger proof than her own assertion. Why, Frances, dear, how well you are looking to-day! I have not seen you for such an age that I thought you must be out of town.” “Has it seemed so long to you, dear?” returned the brown-eyed blonde. “Now, to me the days go so swiftly that, as I sometimes tell Ja—Mr. Bittersweet, I mean—I often forget whether it is Saturday or Monday!” “So you have seen the poor fellow, have you?” returned the blue-eyed girl, with an angelic smile; “it is so good of you to console him. But, indeed, you are always good about such things and so modest about it, too, that but for the men themselves, we should never know how hard you work just to induce them to come and be comforted!” “I—why,—I—” stammered the brown-eyed blonde.