As the girl chattered on it didn’t seem to me that our Latin Quarter was in the slightest danger from her.  Still, some of the girls that was there seemed quite impressed or buffaloed by her manner.  One idea she give out now was new in Red Gap.  She had all her rings named after meals.  She had a breakfast ring and a dinner ring and a supper ring and a banquet ring, and Daisy Estelle Maybury admired the necklace she had on, and Dulcie said that was a mere travelling necklace; and how did they like this cute little restaurant frock she was wearing?  A little dressmaker over on Amsterdam Avenue had turned it out.  All the parties she dealt with, apparently, was little.  She had a little dressmaker and a little hair woman and a little manicure and a little florist, and so forth.  She’d et five cream-cheese sandwiches by this time, in spite of its being quite painful for her to pick up a dropped napkin.  Dulcie didn’t fold over good.  You could tell here was a girl that had never tried to get away from it all.  She wanted to be right where it was.

Pretty soon one of the girls said something about the Bohemians of the Latin Quarter, probably aiming to show this New York chatterbox that Red Gap wasn’t so far west as it looked.  But Dulcie gave ’em the laugh.  She said oh, dear, New York society had simply quit taking up Bohemians, it not being considered smart any longer, and did we really take them up here?  The girls backed up at this.  And Dulcie went on being superior.  She said of course society people now and then made up a party and went down to Washington Square to look them over, but as for taking them up, oh, dear, no!  It was more like a slumming party.  One could stare at them, but one simply didn’t know them.

And perhaps, if she could get Aunt Cora to chaperon them, they might make up one of these slumming parties some evening and go down to Red Gap’s Latin Quarter; it might be amusing.  Cora Wales glistened at this.  She said she guessed people could now see how such goings-on were regarded by society in the true sense of the word.  And it did give the girls a chill, calling the Bigler home a slum.  But I still didn’t see any stuff in Dulcie to vanquish Vernabelle.

And I didn’t see it a minute later when Dulcie wolfed her tenth marshmallow and broke out about winter sports.  She first said what perfectly darling snow we had here.  This caused some astonishment, no one present having ever regarded snow as darling but merely as something to shovel or wade through.  So Dulcie pronged off a piece of sticky chocolate cake and talked on.  She said that everyone in New York was outdooring, and why didn’t we outdoor.  It was a shame if we didn’t go in for it, with all this perfectly dandy snow.  New York people had to go out of town for their winter sports, owing to the snow not being good for sport after it fell there; but here it was right at hand, and did we mean to say we hadn’t organized a winter-sports club.