“So I thought. Then, I told him that I must stop in at the drug store and send off a telephone message. You see, I didn’t want to give Harry all the trouble of coming up in vain.” “You are always so thoughtful,” said the blue-eyed girl. “I try to be. I called Harry up, but he was not in, and I told the office-boy to tell him that I was ill, and could not go with him to Rogers Park, but hoped to be out in a day or two. The boy was as stupid as he could be; I had to repeat the message twice, and even spell my name. Oh, it was awful!” “What? his stupidity?” asked the girl with the Roman nose. “No; my own. As I was going out, the clerk stopped me, and said, ‘You needn’t have taken all that trouble, Miss Marion; you were telephoning to Mr. Vansmith, weren’t you? Well, that was he that just went out; he was standing about three feet away from you all the time you were trying to make the person at the other end of the line understand!’” “Well, I hope your father is satisfied _now_,” said the president. “You have been trying to get him to put in a telephone all winter.” “Humph; you don’t know my father very well, dear. When I told him about it, he only said that he was more fully satisfied than ever that women were not to be trusted with telephones!” “Then there was that horrid drug clerk,” said the girl with the dimple in her chin; “why didn’t he stop you when Harry came in, instead of letting you—” “The fact is, that I knew he was trying to attract my attention all the time, but I thought that it was only somebody else who wanted to use the telephone in a hurry, and I took my own good time.” “He might have known you would have done that,” said the girl with the classic profile. “Girls, I often wonder why drug clerks are such gloomy, misanthropic creatures?” “Dear knows,” said the president; “I’ve often noticed it, though. And how cross a clerk in a shoe store always is! Strange, too, when they have such light, easy work. I tried on seventeen pairs of boots only yesterday, and I never was so tired in all my life; yet I was as amiable as possible, and the clerk, who had nothing to do but wait on me, was so rude that I thought seriously of having the proprietor in to hear of it. However, I compromised by going out without buying anything.” “It was very good of you, I’m sure,” said the blue-eyed girl. “You know Marie sends to Paris for all her shoes. I never saw such beauties in all my life as she wears.” “H’m. I know she _says_ so,” returned the girl with the Roman nose, “but—look here, if I tell you something, will you promise never to tell it as long as you live? Well, then, I spent the day with Marie last week. She had a lovely new pair of shoes, and I tried my best, without asking directly, you know, to find the name of the Parisian boot-maker, and how much she paid for them.” “Of course you didn’t find out,” said the girl with the dimple in her chin. “Marie can be as impervious to a hint as a man.”