"Come, Robert," said Hilda, shaking the somnolent form in the hammock.
"Hey? What? Don’t disturb me. I can die here as well as anywhere. What! Walk home with Gorham? Do you take me for an idiot? Music and moonlight!" with deep scorn. "Oh, go to! Woman, stand aside, or I shall do you an injury. Don’t tempt a desperate man."
"Dear Robert doesn’t seem to care to come with us," laughed Mildred _sotto voce_ to Jack. She was determined that none other than he should walk by her side to the hotel, and of course she had her way.
An hour later she came into Clover’s bedroom, brushing her long hair. Her white wrapper fell open at the neck, disclosing her handsome throat, and she looked particularly beautiful to her partial sister.
"Where else did you and Jack go to-night beside the German village?" she asked.
"You took supper there and stayed all the evening?"
"Yes. We really couldn’t tear ourselves away. It was like being in some romantic old story."
Mildred smiled and hummed her favorite bit from Iolanthe.
"No indeed," answered Clover. "I am not his mother. He doesn’t pretend that I am, and he doesn’t wish me to be: so your little song doesn’t fit the case at all."
She did not look at her sister, but went on with her effort to braid her rebellious hair. Mildred ceased humming.
"I wish my hair was curly," she said at last.
"We all have our gifts," replied Clover. Mildred thought her tone sounded unusually complacent. It was a novel experience to feel aught but compassion, or tenderness, or reverent admiration for Clover, but now she suddenly found herself regarding her for the first time as another girl like herself, and observing her attractions with new eyes.
"What a pretty foot you have, Clover," she said, looking at her sister’s slippered feet.
"Not a bit better shaped than yours, my dear. Let us have a select little mutual admiration society."
"But mine are large," returned Mildred, sitting down and thrusting forth her slippers for inspection.
"But isn’t it strange that people never consider that, in speaking of a woman’s foot? She must have small feet irrespective of her size, or else they had better never be seen or mentioned. In old novels a man sometimes keeps his beloved’s slipper under a glass case. What a formidable piece of furniture my lover will have when he gets a glass case for mine."