"What is it?--tell us, do!" cried all, with the exception of Georgie.
"Miss Stiefbach intends to have some sort of a musical spread next Friday, and we girls have got to play."
"How did you know it?" exclaimed Georgie, thoroughly off her guard.
"I didn't take your method of finding it out, you may be sure," replied Marion. "I never heard a word about it before this afternoon; but if you put two and two together they generally make four, that's all."
"What do you mean by putting 'two and two together'?" impatiently asked Julia Thayer.
"Why, just this!" replied Marion. "Does Mr. Stein have an earthly thing to do with this school except to give us music-lessons? and is there anything that Miss Stiefbach could be getting up with him, that concerned the 'young ladies' that didn't have something to do with our music? and would she be inviting people here when it was convenient to _him_ if it wasn't that they are going to give a musicale, and he is going to make us play? So there you've got the whole matter; I don't think it required much brilliancy to see that."
"Well, I _never_ should have thought of it!" exclaimed Sarah.
"Nor I either," said Florence. "But don't you think it is awfully mean not to have let us known anything about it beforehand, so that we might have had time to practise?"
"I presume Mr. Stein has been secretly drilling us for it this long time, though we poor, unconscious victims didn't suspect it," replied Marion. "But there's Georgie, she has the advantage of us; she has probably decided what she is going to play, and has learned it perfectly." But there was no reply from Georgie as she had discreetly left the room.
"Oh, isn't she sly?" exclaimed Grace Minton.
"Sly! sly isn't the word for it," put in Sarah Brown in her most energetic tones; "she ought to have been named Foxy Graham!"
"Well, there's one thing certain," said Grace Minton, "I shan't have to play; I thank my stars for that!"
"I wonder who will play," said Florence. "Georgie Graham of course; Julia; and you Mab; and I rather guess I shall have to. Well, I don't much care, I don't believe there will be many here, and I think it's time I learned to play before strangers."
"I don't know how I shall ever get on in the world," cried Marion in a despairing tone; "that is about the only thing I never could do."