“Just wait one moment,” said the girl with the dimple in her chin. “I haven’t got to-day’s topic down in my note-book. What did you say it was, Evelyn?” “Oh, my goodness!” cried the president, turning pale, “here we have had a meeting, and I have forgotten to suggest any topic—and not one of you thought to remind me of it! Oh, I am afraid that all my efforts to advance you intellectually are wasted, after all!” “Never mind,” said the girl with the eyeglasses, “this has been an executive meeting, anyhow.” “Why, so it has,” said the president, kissing her; “what a comfort you are, Marion dear. Tom’s handsome cousin is coming home from Montana next week with a lot of money, and you shall be the very first girl to have an introduction to him!” “Have you seen Jack Bittersweet lately?” asked the girl with the eyeglasses, as she linked her arm in that of the girl with the dimple in her chin, after the meeting had dissolved. “Yes, he came to see me yesterday. I was in agony all the time he was there, lest Dorothy come in. I knew she would never believe that it was the first time he had done it since they quarreled!” “Of course she wouldn’t. Did he ask your advice?” “Yes. So does she—but neither of them take it.” “You don’t expect that, I hope. Well, did you find out if he still cares for her?” “He does. I sat on the sofa, in my prettiest house-gown, and he took a chair six feet away. He didn’t even tell me that fewer men would go to the dogs if there were more women like me in the world!” “Well, I only hope that they will soon come to their senses, that’s all. Dorothy looks like a ghost, and as for Jack—” “If they don’t,” cried the girl with the dimple in her chin, savagely, “I shall just have to spend a month or two in a sanatarium. And I’m not sure that that will save my life,” she added. Chapter IX On the Use and Abuse of Political Power “The absurdity of some people!” said the president, pausing as she was about to call the meeting to order. “What excuse do you suppose Elizabeth gave for not asking me to look at her pretty things? She said she fancied I had grown too intellectual to care for gowns and hats!” “How ridiculous! She had probably heard that you do not intend to send her a wedding present,” said the girl with the eyeglasses. “I haven’t told a soul but the members of this club that I shouldn’t give her one,” said the president. “Then she couldn’t possibly know it,” said the blue-eyed girl, hastily. “What enrages _me_, is the insinuation that I have ceased to care for pretty things, just because I study politics, and—er—other things. I don’t see why intellectuality has anything to do with doing up one’s hair with three hairpins, or—” “Wearing gowns which are frayed around the bottom,” said the girl with the dimple in her chin; “neither do I. And, yet they seem to be somehow connected in people’s minds.”