“Or to skip?” asked Harry Goldthwaite, in such a purely bright, good-natured way that no one could take it amiss.

“Well, yes, to skip,” said Adelaide.  “Of course that’s it.  You don’t go straight on, you know, house by house, when you ask people,—­down the hill and into the town.”

“We talked it over,” said Olivia.  “And we got as far as the Hobarts.”  There Olivia stopped.  That was where they had stopped before.

“O yes, the Hobarts; they would be sure to like it,” said Leslie Goldthwaite, quick and pleased.

“Her ups and downs are just like yours,” said Dakie Thayne to Ruth Holabird.

It made Ruth very glad to be told she was at all like Leslie; it gave her an especially quick pulse of pleasure to have Dakie Thayne say so.  She knew he thought there was hardly any one like Leslie Goldthwaite.

“O, they won’t exactly do, you know!” said Adelaide Marchbanks, with an air of high free-masonry.

“Won’t do what?” asked Cadet Thayne, obtusely.

“Suit,” replied Olivia, concisely, looking straight forward without any air at all.

“Really, we have tried it since they came,” said Adelaide, “though what people come for is the question, I think, when there isn’t anything particular to bring them except the neighborhood, and then it has to be Christian charity in the neighborhood that didn’t ask them to pick them up.  Mamma called, after a while; and Mrs. Hobart said she hoped she would come often, and let the girls run in and be sociable!  And Grace Hobart says ’she hasn’t got tired of croquet,—­she likes it real well!’ They’re that sort of people, Mr. Thayne.”

“Oh! that’s very bad,” said Dakie Thayne, with grave conclusiveness.

“The Haddens had them one night, when we were going to play commerce.  When we asked them up to the table, they held right back, awfully stiff, and couldn’t find anything else to say than,—­out quite loud, across everything,—­’O no! they couldn’t play commerce; they never did; father thought it was just like any gambling game!’”

“Plucky, anyhow,” said Harry Goldthwaite.

“I don’t think they meant to be rude,” said Elinor Hadden.  “I think they really felt badly; and that was why it blurted right out so.  They didn’t know what to say.”

“Evidently,” said Olivia.  “And one doesn’t want to be astonished in that way very often.”

“I shouldn’t mind having them,” said Elinor, good-naturedly.  “They are kind-hearted people, and they would feel hurt to be left out.”

“That is just what stopped us,” said Adelaide.  “That is just what the neighborhood is getting to be,—­full of people that you don’t know what to do with.”

“I don’t see why we need to go out of our own set,” said Olivia.

“O dear!  O dear!”

It broke from Ruth involuntarily.  Then she colored up, as they all turned round upon her; but she was excited, and Ruth’s excitements made her forget that she was Ruth, sometimes, for a moment.  It had been growing in her, from the beginning of the conversation; and now she caught her breath, and felt her eyes light up.  She turned her face to Leslie Goldthwaite; but although she spoke low she spoke somehow clearly, even more than she meant, so that they all heard.