Leave it to Doris. Ethel Hueston
good-naturedly. "Shall I teach you some of the new steps, Doris? Of course, you won't dance, but it will be more fun looking on if you know how it is done."
Doris waved the pretty temptress away, but she laughed.
On the night of the "regular party" she stood by with motherly solicitude while Rosalie piled her golden curls high on her head and drew little shining rings down low before her ears.
"I suppose even we preachers can fix our hair in style," she said in the ripply unruffled voice. For regardless of the clash of circumstances with her personal opinions and wants, Rosalie seldom showed real annoyance. But she fingered the bands at the throat of her dress and glanced at Doris with speculating, shining eyes.
The General, with her soft curls drooping tenderly about her face, with her wide frank eyes, wearing a white dress cut on simple lines, seemed a nice and bashful child beside her younger sister, who stoutly decreed that eyes are a talent, given one for cultivation.
When the Andriesons sounded their horn at the gate of the manse the girls ran down-stairs together, hand in hand.
"How do we look, father?" asked Doris, standing before him, straight and slim.
"Like a fresh white morning-glory," he said, kissing her.
"And how do I look?" dimpled Rosalie, drooping her warm eyes behind long lashes, and smiling seductively.
"Like an enchanted poppy tossing in the wind. Don't try to practise your blandishments on me, you little siren. Run along to your social, and be good girls, and don't you flirt, Miss Rosalie, or you'll have to go to an extra prayer-meeting next week."
Catching a hand of each, with Zee and Treasure shouting in the rear, he ran down the steps with them and out the stone walk to the motor, whirring impatiently. Then the car rolled away, and the girls sauntered back to the house, their arms around their father.
"Rosalie is going to have the time of her life, dadsy," said Zee wisely. "You mark my words. She wasn't practising those eyes on you for nothing."
"Oh, Zee, give me a rest," he cried, laughing. "Rosalie has naughty eyes, I know, but there is a lot of regular sense behind those curly lashes."
"Rosalie isn't going to let folks know it, though, unless she has to," said Zee, and the subject was closed.
But Doris soon realized that charming Mrs. Andrieson was no efficient chaperon for a butterfly like Rosalie. For as she led the girls into the dressing-room at the club house, she said lightly:
"Now toss the manse to the winds, my dears, and frolic like the regular buds you ought to be."
"I am going to," chirped Rosalie. "I am going to frivol just as hard as ever I can."
She asserted her independence without delay. "I can not go down there among all those evening gowns looking like this," she said. "Here, Mrs. Andrieson, can't we tuck these shoulder bands back a little?"
"To be sure we can," agreed the chaperon, and laughing excitedly, she folded back the soft lace from Rosalie's pretty shoulders.
"What a lovely throat you have, Rosalie. Can't we tuck it under a little more? That shoulder is too beautiful to waste."
"That is plenty, thanks," cried Rosalie, laughing nervously. "If it is too terribly awful, I won't do it, Doris," she said, looking directly at her sister.
Doris returned the gaze with honest searching eyes. "It isn't too terribly bad, Rosalie. And it does look lovely—and lots of our girls wear them much lower even at the socials—but father—"
"Oh, father would never know the difference. An inch or so of skin is nothing to us preachers, you know."
It was a lovely evening, in spite of Rosalie's naughtiness. Doris was fascinated as she watched the lightly moving figures swaying so rhythmically when the music said sway, and though she so many times had to say, "I am sorry, thank you, I do not dance," she was never left alone, and the hours were delightfully frittered with one and another of the men—not Christian Endeavor men, who had to talk of church things when they talked with members of the manse—but regular men, who went places, and did things, and had their names in the paper—regular men who talked of things that interested them. And of course that would interest Doris, who all her life had been in training for interest in others' lives.
Rosalie, after two or three painful refusals, clenched her slim white hands and ran to Doris.
"General," she whispered hurriedly, "you may shoot me at sunrise if you like, but I tell you right now that I am going to dance, dance, dance the very toes off my slippers. Yes, sir; I am. And it will be worth a good big punishment. To stand here like a mummy and say, 'I can't'—it is more than flesh and blood can stand—my flesh and blood, anyhow."
Doris was nothing if not honest, and she had to admit that Rosalie did seem almost predestined for that one-two-three-skippity-skip-skip business! But the members—Oh, of course, the members were doing it themselves, and Doris could see a deacon drinking something that—Well, Doris knew they never served it at the Endeavor socials—but things were so different with us preachers, so very different. And it would hurt father, that was the worst of it, and he was such a good dear old thing—But Doris had to sympathize with Rosalie a little. Was it possible that Providence might have erred a tiny bit in putting such loveliness and such naughtiness and such adorable sweetness into the gentle environs of a manse?
So intent was Doris upon the graceful figure of her winsome Problem that she did not see the man who had stopped at her side and was looking down with quizzical laughing eyes into her anxious face.
"My, such a lot of trouble," he said at last, and Doris looked up astonished.
"Oh, I beg your pardon—"
"No occasion in the world. I was laughing at you, so I must do the apologizing. But I feel justified in laughing at you. This isn't any place to worry. This is a party. Is your sweetheart dancing too often and too tenderly with your lovely friend?"
"I haven't any sweetheart," she said, laughing gaily at the notion. "It is my sister I am watching. She is such a nice, naughty little thing."
She pointed Rosalie out to him, not without pride, and flushed with pleasure when he commented warmly on her grace and beauty.
"And how beautifully she dances."
"Yes, she does, the little sinner. And a grand time we'll have in the morning, fixing things up with father."
"Doesn't he allow you to dance?"
"He allows us to do anything," said Doris with loyal dignity. "But we do not do it. We are preachers."
"What, all of you?"
"Oh, no, just father, but the rest of us back him up, you know."
"Well, since the naughty sister has involved the family in disgrace, why don't you support her, and have a good time yourself?"
"I am having a perfectly wonderful time, thank you, but I haven't Rosalie's feet and eyes. I do not know how to dance, and I do not care to learn. Rosalie gets those things by instinct, but I have none. She is the butterfly of the manse, and one is plenty." Then looking into his face gravely, she said, "I am different. Rosalie is always running into excitement and adventure. I never did in my life. I went clear through college, and was never even thrilled. Rosalie has thrills a dozen times a day. Of course, I was busy. We had Miss Carlton, but I did most of the work, and there was the church, and I studied harder than Rosalie does—I had to. She gets her lessons by instinct, too, I guess."
"Then very plainly now is your time for play. If excitement does not come to you, go after it. Look for your thrills. If you do, you will find them. If you do not stumble into romance, as your sister does, go and find it for yourself."
She laughed brightly at that. "I do not know where to look. And if I ran into it, very likely I should pass it by unrecognized. Rosalie says men are the best thrillers, but they do not thrill