Leave it to Doris. Ethel Hueston
handsome father is she may change her mind," said the General soberly.
So she slipped back to the bay-window, and bent all her energies, and all the force of her strong young will to the task of concentration.
A little later she heard Miss Carlton at the up-stairs branch of the telephone, and though she would not dream of listening to a telephonic conversation, she did saunter carelessly to the hall door and so overheard Miss Carlton giving a hurried order for an expressman.
"Providence and concentration together are really irresistible," she smiled to herself. "I suppose, after all, I could have gotten along without the concentration, but in a crisis like this I thought it would not hurt to try everything."
She went demurely back to her mending, and after a while the expressman came and took away the trunk and bags, and finally Miss Carlton came to her.
"I am going home right now, Doris," she said, "but I do not regard this as final. We shall say I am going for a visit. And when you want me to come back, just telephone. After all, I think it is a good move. Your father will soon find out what a difference I made in the home. He will be the first to want me back." She smiled without resentment. "So I quite agree with you, little General. This just suits my purpose, and I shall stay at home until—some one comes after me."
"I know we are going to miss you," cried Doris sincerely. "You have always been kind to us, and we have never been able to pay you half what you deserved. And if we find we can't get along, and you are willing, we shall have you back in a hurry. But I am going to try, and I never yield until I have to."
So Doris paid Miss Carlton the modest sum due her and the two parted with cordiality, Miss Carlton leaving friendly messages for the other members of the household.
As soon as she was quite out of sight, Doris flew to the kitchen.
"Even the Problem is amenable to a good meal," she said. "She shall have delicious cream gravy—the little glutton—and pear preserves, and apple dumplings."
So eagerly and so passionately did she devote her energies to the task that she did not hear the door open behind her, and never knew her sister was at her elbow until a soft ripply voice said suddenly:
"Well, Mr. General, is mess nearly ready for us?"
"Oh, Rosalie," cried Doris, flinging floury arms about the girl at her side. "Oh, you dear little darling, I am so glad you came."
"Why so mushy?" demanded Rosalie in a voice so soft and gurgling and throaty it made one think of tinkling waterfalls, and silver moonshine, and irresistible dimples. "Don't I always come? Why all the exclamations at me?"
"Because I love you, and because I am happy, and because—you scoot to the phone, will you, and call up Mr. James' residence and tell father I want him to come home to dinner to-night without fail, for very extra special reasons—apple dumplings, but you needn't tell him over the phone—and hurry, dear, before he leaves there."
The General looked soberly after her sister as she danced lightly out of the kitchen. Rosalie was quite too terribly lovely for anything—that was really what made her such a Problem. And her eyes were full of dazzling witching lights, and dangerous dark shadows, her lips were rosy, pouty, tempting lips, her skin was a pearly pink and white, and her voice melting melody.
"She is Problem enough now—what will she be a little later on?" thought the General anxiously as she took a loving look at her dumplings.
"Where is Miss Carlton?" asked Rosalie, returning promptly. "Father says he will come immediately. Aren't the girls home yet? I suppose I must set the table then. I think you should speak to them, Doris—they are never here when you want them. Where is Miss Carlton? Won't she be here for dinner?"
"No, not—"
"Goody!—Doris, do you think she—has her eye on father?"
"Why, Rosalie, whatever put such a notion as that into your head?" Doris was all wide-eyed astonishment.
"Well, perhaps it is not nice of me to mention it, but she is always tagging him about, and telling him how clever he is, and she is always saying how much we need a mother—Oh, she's all right, of course—not my type at all, but—I am glad she won't be home for dinner. Doris, will you ask father if we may go to the Country Club da—party next week? They may dance, but we won't have to. I could do it though as easy as not. This is the first time they have asked us to a strictly town affair, and we just have to go. This is the way they dance that new step the girls are raving about. See? Three steps this way, one, two, three; one, two, three; hippity hip—"
"Rosalie!" gasped Doris. "Wherever did you learn that?"
"Amy taught me. She takes regular dancing lessons from a man, a dollar a lesson, and then she teaches me. It is just like gym, you know, only at a dance there are men. Miss Graham says I am very graceful, and with my slender ankles and high insteps I would look lovely in dancing slippers. Now, Doris, don't be horrified, I am not going to dance. But you tell father we are invited, and—You sit out the dances, you know, if you are a preacher and can't dance—and you get behind a big fern, and the men tell you how lovely you are, and how much nicer it is to sit out with you than to go stumbling around over other girls' toes, getting their collars all sweated out, and how sweet and cool you look, and—"
"Rosalie!"
"They do not mean it, Doris, they just talk that way. And I know they do not mean it, so it does me no harm. And it is lots of fun. They all do it."
"They do not talk that way to me," said Doris virtuously.
"No, you do not give them a chance. If a man says you have beautiful blue eyes, you look him straight in the face and say, 'Yes, thank goodness, I need something to make up for my pug nose.' That is no way to talk to a man. You ought to drop your lashes like this, and then look up suddenly, and away again quickly, and laugh a little and say, 'Oh, you talk that way to every one—you do not mean it,' and then they say you are the only girl in the world—"
"Rosalie Artman, I think you are perfectly terrible. Where in the world do you learn all that silly stuff?"
"I do not learn it," laughed Rosalie. "I do not have to. It was born in me. I sort of breathe it. Tra, la, la, lalala. I can do a toe dance, Doris. I will teach you. Does father go to the Sessions to-night? Then we will have a lesson while he is gone. Oh, there come—"
"Rosalie, I want to ask you—Don't you think we ought to get along without Miss Carlton now? She is so sort of prim, and bossy—and it costs eighteen dollars a month—and if we do you can have nicer clothes, you know."
"Wouldn't be proper," said Rosalie lightly. "Beautiful girls must be properly guarded. And besides, I would have to do more work, and I don't like to work."
"Father is proper enough for anybody," said Doris with spirit. "And I do all of the work anyhow."
"Could I have a regular evening dress, V in the back and no sleeves?" demanded Rosalie with glittering eyes. "Isn't it funny, the less there is to a dress, the more there is to the cost? All the girls have evening dresses, and I have the nicest shoulders in the whole gym. But Miss Carlton would never go. You couldn't fire her off."
"Who is the General?" demanded Doris loftily. "If I say go, she goes in a hurry."
Rosalie looked up quickly.
"You bad General, she is gone already, isn't she?"
"Yes; do you mind?"
"Are you sure father won't go trotting after her, and marry her on the sly?"
Doris lifted horrified eyes skyward.
"Well, I am sure I do not care. I think I am rather glad. Whenever I got my dates mixed, and had two or three callers at once, she was always shocked. She said the boys didn't act that way when she was a girl. I rather suppose they didn't. But what Miss Carlton was and what I am are two remotely different things. Why, you would hardly