Leave it to Doris. Ethel Hueston
"No," said Doris honestly. "One can't think of any two things more different. You are such a—such—"
"Problem," laughed Rosalie. "Don't I know it? Well, you can not solve me, Doris, so don't try. But I am just like those horrible trigonometry nightmares—you can't figure them out to save your life, but they are quite perfectly all right in spite of you."
Doris turned to give her sister a warm adoring look. "I know that," she said happily. "Only, however in the world you manage to say such wonderful things with your eyes, Rosalie—I've tried and tried—alone, of course," she added hastily. "I wouldn't before people for anything. But I can't take people's breath away as you do."
Rosalie's voice rippled into mellow laughter. "You will learn. No, you never will, Doris. You will fall in love, and marry a perfectly adorable man, and have perfectly wonderful babies, and be as happy as the day is long. And I will fritter along and sparkle along, and have a hundred beaus, and Miss Carlton and I will finish up together. There come those bad girls. Now you just scold them, General. Don't you stand for this nonsense any more. Why, I have had to set the table every night for a week."
The younger sisters came into the room together, as they went everywhere together. They were very nearly of the same height, though one was two years older.
"Are you tired, Treasure?" asked Doris quickly.
"I haven't done anything but laugh all afternoon," came the answer. "Why should I be tired?"
Doris looked tenderly from the face of one little sister to the other. Treasure's eyes were clear, serene and limpid. Her delicately tinted olive face was fine and spiritual. And right by her side stood Zee, the baby of the manse, thirteen years old, dark curls a-tangle, dark eyes a-sparkle, red cheeks aglow.
"Oh, you little Imp!" cried Rosalie. "You look just awful."
"I do not think so," said Treasure quickly. "She looks lovely all blown about like that."
Zee laughed at them both with charming unconcern. "Do I have to brush myself down before dinner?" she demanded, edging toward her corner of the table.
"Indeed you do; wash down, and brush down, and rub down, and do it quickly, for here comes father."
Zee obediently skipped up the stairs, and Rosalie ran to the hall to greet her father.
"And how is the Blessing of the Manse?" he asked, crossing the room, with Rosalie still clinging to his arm, to look tenderly into Treasure's soft fine face.
"Perfectly all right," came the even answer.
"But not very healthy," put in Zee slyly, coming back in haste. "Didn't I do a quick job, General? Treasure is all right, but not very healthy. That is why she is a blessing. Haven't you noticed, Rosalie, that blessings are very, very frail? Maybe if I looked sickish you would call me a blessing, too?"
"Is she gone, General?" came the anxious whisper as the father drew near his oldest daughter. "And how did the Problem take it?"
"Gone, father, and the Problem is glad of it—we might have known she would be whatever we did not expect. Now I am the General in very truth, and supper is ready—Zee, don't rush. Just a minute, dear, the pear preserves won't evaporate. You mustn't hurry father into the blessing."
When the blessing had been asked on their food the father looked about the little round table, and his face was richly satisfied.
"This is something like," he said, smiling into the faces of his four girls.
"Yes, it is now," said Rosalie. "But you just wait till the General gets started. She will never let us slide along and be comfortable as Miss Carlton did. Wait till she has time to think up orders!"
CHAPTER II THE PROBLEM
"General, did you ask father if we may go to the Country Club da—party?" asked Rosalie, in her most irresistibly wheedlesome tone.
Doris looked very sober. "No, I didn't," she admitted slowly. "I am afraid we—shouldn't, Rosalie. We haven't anything to wear, in the first place. It is a regular party, you know."
"That is why I want to go. I am so tired of stupid little class affairs, and Endeavor socials. I want a regular, honest-to-goodness party. Please, Doris. Lots of our members belong to the Country Club. It is very respectable."
"But they are not preachers, and we are. And we haven't any regular party clothes."
"Use your eyes, my belovedest, and no one will notice your clothes. At least, the men won't," said Rosalie shrewdly.
"Rosalie, that positively is not nice. You mustn't do it."
"All right, General, just as you say. But your graduating dress is very sweet and becoming, and I can wear my pink crêpe. It is a little worn under the arms, but my eyes—Anyhow, as you say, the men won't pay any attention to our clothes."
"I did not say any such thing. How could we go, Rosalie? It is three miles out, and they go in cars—we haven't one, and we can't have a taxi, and we couldn't go alone anyhow."
"I never thought of that." Rosalie puzzled over it a moment. "I have it! Mr. and Mrs. Andrieson will go, of course. And they have their grand big car, and they like us very much, indeed."
"They aren't members—"
"Oh, well, there are a few quite nice people that don't belong to us. And they are terribly proper, you know, and go everywhere."
"But we can't ask to go with them."
"Why, certainly not. We won't have to." Rosalie got up slowly. "I think I feel like taking a stroll. I am restless to-day. I shall just saunter down Lawn Street, and maybe Mrs. Andrieson will be on her front porch. She always stops me, if she is in sight."
"You must not ask her—"
"Oh, Doris, I never thought of such a thing. But she is sure to invite us to go with her when she knows we were asked. And so if father comes in while I am gone, you'd better have it out with him. There's a sweet little General."
So nicely did Rosalie manage her meeting with Mrs. Andrieson that in less than an hour she was home with everything planned to her perfect satisfaction. Mrs. Andrieson was positively yearning to take them to the Country Club—it would be such fun to play chaperon to two pretty young girls. To Father Artman, one party was just like another—in his innocent eyes there was no difference between an Endeavor Social and a Country Club da—er, party—except that he had never been to the latter in person. And so it was entirely settled that they were to go, long before the General herself was at all convinced as to the propriety of it.
And when she found Rosalie before the long mirror in her room, with the soft bands of lace at the throat of the pink dress tucked carefully underneath and out of sight, permitting a quite generous exposure of soft white throat and shoulder, Doris knew for sure that it was a great mistake.
"Rosalie Problematic Artman," she said sternly. "We shall not go a step if that is your plan."
Rosalie looked tenderly at the pink shoulder. "Doesn't it look nice, Doris?" Reluctantly she restored the bands to their proper place. "I look like a silly little grammar-school kid. But that is what we get for being preachers. Never mind. I certainly have good shoulders if ever—if ever—"
"If ever what?"
"If ever I do get a chance at the outside of the ministry," she said blithely. "But, of course, father would faint at the bare idea, though it is not really low even with the bands turned under—nothing at all like the dresses other women wear."
Even Doris had to laugh at the childish fair face and the childish soft voice of little Rosalie as she descanted on the matter of "other women."
And