Amnesiacs -- Fiction; New York (State) -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Trials -- Fiction; Young women -- Fiction
"Bllllaaaaa." Minga rolled in despairing disapprobation on the couch.
"I know it, but it's not my affair. I knew that was what was going on
in your head. Lawrence Multimillionaire, the missing heir of Deepcroft
Manor--Oh!" Minga wailed, "to think of you, Sard, the steady, the
highbrow, the blessed Damosel, to come to a thing like this! Honest,
I do think the movies turn our heads when--when we least expect it.
I thought I noticed that the garbage man wore a fraternity pin," she
jeered, "and surely the iceman quoted from the 'Rubaiyat' yesterday
morning."
But Sard would not catch at this mood, she only put aside the teasing
hand that tweaked her hair and fussed over her belt buckle. At last,
she said half under her breath, "If it is amnesia, if he himself
doesn't know who he is, where he belongs, think of the horror of that!"
There was a whir and chug of an arrested car on the drive under the
window. Dunstan with klaxon and voice hailed them. "Oh, you Minga,
put out your head. Say, goils, we've got a notion. The Gertrude bunch
is going to pull off that canoe trip up the Hackensack River this
afternoon--supper and a few ghost stories, toasted marshmallows, wit,
laughter, and moonlight. Want to go?"
Minga looked out, eyeing him critically. "Dunce, why do you wear a
sweater that color? It's awful for you; you should wear nothing but
soft tans and yellow to go with your doggy eyes."
"Humph!" said Dunstan, "that'll do for my doggy eyes." He got out and
went around to the back of the car and took out a kit of tools. "Now
I don't want to be bothered with the drool of an engaged flapper," he
declared; "but I say, do you want to go on this joy jump? I mean it."
The girls leaning out consulted each other with their eyes. "We were
going to wash our hair," demurred Sard, "and then we promised to make
fudge for Aunt Reely, and then," said Minga solemnly, "I promised to
show Aunt Reely a knitting stitch."
"Ha," the youth below looked up and grinned--"in other words you
don't want to go, or in still other words you don't like the Gertrude
and Cin combination. Oh, Sard, you're so noble and literary," the
brother said in mock admiration, "you express things so well.
You--she--I--they--it--he--she," Dunstan dropped the rôle of Aunt
Aurelia and concluded shortly, "Well, why should you go? Who wants a
couple of old hens washing their hair? The road-hog Gert and Cin'll do
all right."
Minga thought the thing over. "There's nothing to see on the
Hackensack," she misdoubted, "just old water and moss and trees and
things."
"Oh, ain't there?" said Dunstan, airily. "Well, I don't tell everything
to ladies who don't care for my society or my friends. I don't speak of
pink pearls, and here I raced all the way home and punctured a tire to
get you two old crones because I thought you'd like to go."
The two crones, slightly crestfallen, once more surveyed each other.
"Which men did you pick out for us?" at last inquired Sard.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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