Happie's fudge boiled up suddenly, and suddenly Laura spoke, breaking a silence that had lasted for several minutes.
"I think I should like to be called Laure," she said.
"Law! What for?" cried Happie, promptly, blowing away vigorously on the spoonful of fudge which she had taken out to test.
"It's less common than Laura and more musical," said Laura pensively. "Laure sounds elegant."
"It sounds as if you could put your finger through it anywhere; I don't like French names for American and English girls," added Happie.
"I like names that sound like beautiful music," said Laura, who really was talented musically, but who was pitiably conscious of the fact. "I was making up the loveliest little song--the sweetest air!--and I was writing the words too. I said:
'She shone afar, Like a golden star, My angel Laure.'
And then I had to stop, because it ought to have been Laura, and Laure wouldn't have rhymed. If only it was Laure now----"
"It wouldn't have rhymed, even if it had been," interrupted Happie, not too patiently. "Can't you hear that _afar_ and _star_ don't rhyme with _Laure_?"
"And what's the matter with writing songs and poems to some other girl beside yourself?" suggested Bob. "You might have said: 'My angel Bar,' for instance, and pretended the angel's name was Barbara. For goodness' sake, don't be a goose, Laura! You're nearly in your 'teens, as you so often remind us, and you ought to stop being so sentimental."
"You're not musical, Bob," said Laura, so pityingly, and with such an air of shedding light on the whole question that they all shouted.
"Fudge's done!" announced Happie triumphantly, giving a few last, furious beats to the mixture turning delightfully thick and sugary in the pan. "Bring on the pans, Polly, and, Bob, will you put it out on the fire escape till it gets cool enough to go on the ice without melting our entire stock? I've got to rest and cool my face."
Her lieutenants meekly obeyed, and Happie dropped on the chair which Bob vacated, fanning herself vigorously with a paper.
"I hope you haven't harmed your complexion, child," said Margery with her elder sisterly air, as she surveyed Happie's flaming cheeks.
"Fireproof!" Happie replied carelessly. "Sunproof and freckleproof too; you know I never burn or freckle as you do, Margery. That comes of having golden hair and peach blossom tints. I'm betwixt and between--coloring, age, height, cleverness, looks, everything, so I just slip through, and nothing touches me. I don't care! I like being fourteen and not having to think of skin or anything! I'd rather change places with Penny than with you, Peggy, but the worst of it is in three years I'll be as old as you are now."