"Now for our dinners!" Eurie said, as the whistle shrieked a warning that the station was being neared. "What are we going to do?"
"We are going to eat them, I presume, as usual," Miss Erskine said in her most indifferent tone. I should explain that long before this the girls had grown weary of the separate seats, and by dint of much planning and the good-natured removal of two fellow passengers to other seats had accomplished an arrangement that should naturally have been enjoyed from the beginning: that of a turned seat, and being their own seat-mates.
"But I mean," Eurie said, in no wise quenched by what was a common enough manner in Miss Erskine, "are we to get a lunch, or are we to go in to a regular dinner?"
"If you mean what I am going to do, I shall most assuredly have a 'regular' dinner, as you call it. I have no fancy for eating things thrown together in a bag."
"The bag will be the most economical process for all that," Eurie said, laughing at Miss Erskine's disdainful face.
"I presume very likely; but as I did not start on this trip for the purpose of studying social economy, I shall vote for the dinner."
"And I shall take to the bag method," Eurie said, decidedly. Opposition always decided her. So it did Flossy, though in a different way; she was sure to side with the stronger party.
"It would be pleasanter for us all to keep together," she began in a doubtful tone, looking first at Miss Erskine and then at Eurie.
"But since, according to Eurie's and my decided differences, it is impossible for us to do the 'better' thing, which of the two _worse_ things are you going to do?" This Miss Erskine said with utmost good nature, but with utmost determination--as much as it would have taken to carry out a good idea in the face of opposition.
"Oh, I think I'll go with you." Flossy said it hastily, as if she feared that she might appear foolish in the eyes of this young lady by having fancied anything else.
"Very well--then it remains for Marion to choose her company," Eurie said, composedly.
"It is already chosen," she said, promptly. "It is a slice of bread and butter, with a very thin slice of fat ham, which I never eat, and a greasy doughnut, the whole done up in a brown paper. This is decidedly an improvement on the bag dinner (which you think of going after) in an economical point of view; and as I am a student of social and all other sorts of economy, not only on this trip but on every other trip of mine in this mortal life, I recommend it to you; at least I would have done so if you had asked me this morning before you left home."