The Teacup Club — Reading Notes

ce, too, and gotten nothing out of it!”

“Perhaps he—he did it hoping to please you, dear.”

“His actions are perfectly indifferent to me, I assure you. Besides, if I made up with him to-morrow, Frances would always think I was jealous. I jealous of her—the idea! And, oh, Emily, the way he—he flirts with that girl is enough to b—break my heart!”

“If you two girls have anything interesting to say, I wish you would say it aloud,” broke in the president. “Of course I am not curious, but some of the others may—”

“Nothing at all interesting,” said the blue-eyed girl, promptly; “I—I was just telling Emily that this club seems the one thing needed to fill my cup of happiness to overflowing!”

“And mine!” said the girl with the Roman nose. “By the way, isn’t it too provoking that curls are coming in again, just as veils are going out!”

“And just at the windiest season of the year, too,” wailed the brown-eyed blonde. “Really, I often think that the fashions are invented by men—they are so contrary!”

“Pardon me,” said the president, “I did not quite catch what you were saying, because Emily and Marion were both talking at the same time. It seems to me that since I have been married, I can’t follow even two conversations simultaneously, as I used.”

“Speaking of that,” said the girl with the eyeglasses, “who do you tell your secrets to now that you are married?”

“Why, I’ve hit on a splendid plan,” cried the president, “when I feel that I must just tell a secret or die—and I often feel that way—I wait until Tom is asleep and repeat the whole story in his ear. It relieves my mind and does no harm.”

“Don’t be too sure of that,” said the girl with the dimple in her chin. “My sister Helen doesn’t agree with you at all. You mentioned it to her the other day and she thought it clever, and resolved to emulate your wisdom, so she tried it on her husband, and he wasn’t asleep, only pretending.”

“But I always test my husband with a question or two, first,” said the president.

“So did Helen. She asked him if he could fail to see how much she needed a new bonnet and wanted to know how much his share of the alumni banquet amounted to. He only snored in reply, and of course she thought she was safe and repeated the secret.”

“With the result?” queried the blue-eyed girl, who was listening, breathless.

“That it was all over his club the next day,” said the girl with the dimple in her chin. “It would not have made any difference,” she added, soberly, “only the secret was a rather clever trick I had played on Dick a few days before—and he belongs to the same club!”

“And yet they say a man can keep a secret!” said the girl with the Roman nose.

“Who says so?” queried the girl with the eyeglasses. “Other men? Oh! I didn’t know but that you had heard some woman say so.”

“Not unless a man was listening, dear, and that man a person whom—”

“She wished to flatter immensely!”

“Yes. Or who happened to know some of her own secrets! Girls, I’ve been wondering what on earth Annie sees in that horrid Fred Van Stupid? Now, I can understand the interest a girl takes in a brainless man who has a great deal of money, because then—”

“He is exposed to so many temptations and her influence is sure to do him good,” finished the girl with the dimple in her chin, “for my part, I always let Ned Goldie come to see me oftener than usual during Lent. I feel that I am really doing some good and—”

“Violets are an absolute necessity then and they are so dear that very few men can afford to present them in quantities.”

“Oh, of course I let him bring me flowers if he wants to—it is so much better for him to spend his money in that way than to lose it at poker, that I feel quite a missionary.”

“H’m; I don’t know about that, dear, though it’s very lovely of you to feel so,” sighed the president, “the fact is, that you are actually encroaching on what is really my violet money. Ned will play poker with my husband at the club at other seasons of the year, when he is not allowed to see much of you. He always loses and I make Tom divide his winnings with me, so—”