MATCHED PEARLS Read Online Free Page A

went by and he had to come away around through the gate in the hedge and walk across the grass. But I must have been mistaken. Probably you called out to know what on earth he had done up in that handkerchief and he had to come in to show you. However, I should say in any case he was getting on fast.”
    “Oh, shut up, will you?” said Constance, quite vexed and devoting herself to placing the airy stems in the fern-fringed bowl. The entrance of the rest of the family created a diversion, and Constance’s mother exclaimed over the beauty of the centerpiece.
    “Wherever did you find them, dear?” she asked.
    “Just an offering from one of her throng of admirers,” answered Frank quickly with an eloquent look. “They begin quite early in the morning, you perceive. I must wonder what it’s going to be like around here this summer if they come as thick as this in the spring.”
    “Frank!” said his mother in a reproving tone. “You promised me last night you wouldn’t tease your sister anymore.”
    Frank opened his eyes wide in wonder.
    “Why, Muth dear, I wasn’t teasing. I was just admiring her tactics. She certainly has acquired good technique while she was at college.”
    But Constance, with a murmur about washing her hands, hurried upstairs, and when she returned with coolly powdered cheeks and a placid exterior, her brother had somehow been subdued until only a pair of dancing eyes reminded her that he had not forgotten.
    They sat down to breakfast, bowed their heads for the formal mumbling of a grace by the head of the house, the same old mumbled blessing he had used since Constance was a baby and his wife had told him it was not seemly to bring up children at a table without some sort of grace being said.
    During the grapefruit and oatmeal, the passing of cream and sugar and hot rolls, the serving of eggs and bacon, there was pleasant conversation. Grandmother was not present. She took her breakfast in bed. They could speak about her freely.
    “She was so pleased, Constance,” said Mary Courtland. “She’s been all strained up over this ever since she heard you were coming home at Easter and the girls in your class were all joining the church.”
    “Well, I suppose it was an easy way to please her,” laughed the girl. “Of course I wasted the whole morning, but then it was worth it. Mother, it’s to be simply great having those pearls right now before college closes.”
    “You forget, Connie,” put in Frank, “the comely giant. You wouldn’t have met him, remember, if you hadn’t gone to church. Pearls and a giant all in one morning. I’ll say the time wasn’t wasted even if poor Ruddy Van did have to cool his heels at the country club with Mildred Allison.”
    But nobody was listening to Frank. His father was reading the morning paper, his sister acted as if he didn’t exist, and his mother went right on talking, deeming it the best way to get rid of the pest to just ignore him.
    “You’ll have to be very careful about those pearls, you know, dear,” her mother warned Constance. “They are valuable, of course. Your grandmother will probably tell you before you leave just how valuable they are. You’d better arrange to keep them in the college safe. And be sure you don’t tell people indiscriminately that they are real. For really they are very valuable.”
    “Yes, and Connie,” chimed Frank again in his nicest tone, “you better be careful about that good-looking giant, too.
He
might turn out to be valuable, you know. You never can tell when you have the real thing in a man right under your thumb, you know.”
    Something in Constance’s mind clicked at that, but she went right on ignoring her brother, even though she did register a wonder whether he might not happen to be right concerning this particular young man.
    Then Ruddy Van Arden slid up to the door in his new gray roadster, and Constance, with a breath of relief, hurried off after her racket and presently was gone into a