Читать книгу The Girl Scouts' Captain онлайн

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They had plenty of time after supper, so they drove leisurely into the city, arriving at the settlement at exactly half past eight. Harsh sounds from a jazz orchestra greeted them from the basement windows as they stopped at the curb. Evidently the dance had begun.

“Better lock your car securely,” Lily warned her companion. “The neighborhood doesn’t seem to be any too good.”

“No, it isn’t,” agreed Marjorie, glancing around at the disreputable looking houses on either side of the street. “John was furious when I told him where we were coming.”

“So was Dick. He said they’d be along before eleven o’clock, as I suggested, because he’d be worried all evening. Aren’t men silly?”

“Sometimes,” Marjorie admitted.

They opened the heavy door of the settlement, and passed down the hall, glancing to right and left at the empty rooms and offices. Concluding that every one must be at the party in the basement, they descended the stairway which led to the gymnasium.

Never, in all their boarding school or college days, had they seen a hall so elaborately, so profusely decorated. Great sheaves of wheat were banked all around the room; enormous branches of trees covered the apparatus; paper streamers in every color of the rainbow hung from the lights, and confetti was scattered around the floor near the chairs, and upon the seats. The room appeared small, although in reality it was the standard size for a gymnasium.