Part 18 (1/2)
”She isn't!” declared Betty, much surprised. ”You must be letting your imagination run away with you, Rob. There isn't a girl in the Valley friendlier and sweeter to Lloyd than Bernice Howe. You watch them next time they are together, and see. They've been good friends for years.”
”Then all I can say is that some girls have a queer idea of friends.h.i.+p.
It's downright _catty_ the way they purr and rub around to your face, and then show their spiteful little claws when your back is turned.
That's what I've noticed Bernice doing lately. She calls her all the sugary names in the dictionary when she's with her, but when her back is turned--well, it's just a shrug of the shoulders or a lift of the eyebrows or a little twist of the mouth maybe, but they insinuate volumes. What makes girls do that way, Betty? Boys don't. If they have any grievance they fight it out and then let each other alone.”
”I'm sure I don't know why,” answered Betty. ”I'll be honest with you and confess that you are right. Half the girls at school were that way.
They might be fair and high-minded about everything else, but when it came to that one thing they were--well, as you say, regular cats. They didn't have the faintest conception of what a David and Jonathan friends.h.i.+p could be like. Even the ordinary kind didn't seem to bind them in any way, or impose any obligation on them when their own interests were concerned.”
”Deliver me from such friends!” e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Rob. ”I'd rather have a sworn enemy. He wouldn't do me half the harm.” Then after a pause, ”I suppose, if you haven't noticed it, then Lloyd hasn't either, that Bernice is bitterly jealous of her.”
”No, I am sure she has not.”
”Then I wish you'd drop her a hint. I couldn't mention the subject to her, because it is an old fight of ours. You know how we've squabbled for hours over it--the difference between the codes of honor in a girl's friends.h.i.+ps and boys'. No matter how carefully I made the distinction that I meant the average girl, and not all of them, she always flared into a temper, and in order to be loyal to her entire s.e.x, took up arms against me in a regular pitched battle. She's ordered me off the place more than once, and yet in her soul I believe she agrees with me.”
”But, Rob, if that is a pet theory of yours that you go around applying in a wholesale way, isn't it barely possible that you've made a mistake this time and imagined that Bernice is two-faced in her friends.h.i.+p?”
Rob shook his head. ”She'll be at the station this morning. You can see for yourself, if you keep your eyes open.”
”Now, to be explicit, just what is it I shall see?” retorted Betty. But Phil interrupted their tete-a-tete at that point, and when they started to the station an hour later, her question was still unanswered. Bernice Howe was there, as Rob had predicted, and Katie Mallard and several other of the Valley girls who had enjoyed the hospitality of The Beeches during Miss Bonham's visit.
”It looks quite like a garden-party,” said Miles Bradford to Miss Allison, watching the pretty girls, in their light summer costumes, flutter around the waiting-room. ”I don't know whether to compare them to a flock of b.u.t.terflies or a bouquet of sweet peas. I am glad we are going to take some of them with us to-morrow, and wish--”
Betty, who had turned to listen, because his smiling glance seemed to include her in the conversation, failed to hear what it was he wished.
Bernice Howe, who was standing with her back to her, took occasion just then to draw Miss Bonham aside, and her voice, although pitched in a low key, was unusually penetrating. At the same moment the entire party s.h.i.+fted positions to make room for some new arrivals in the waiting-room, and Betty was jostled so that she was obliged to dodge a corpulent woman with a carpet-bag and a lunch-basket. When she recovered her balance she found herself out of range of Doctor Bradford's voice, but almost touching elbows with Bernice. She was saying:
”We're going to miss you dreadfully, Miss Bonham. I always do miss Allison's guests and Kitty's nearly as much as my own. They're so dear about sharing them with me. Now some girls are so stingy, they fairly keep their visitors under lock and key--that is, if they are men. They wouldn't dream of taking them to call on another girl. Afraid to, I suppose. Afraid of losing their own laurels. There's one of the kind.”
Betty saw her nod with a meaning smile toward Lloyd, and caught another sentence or two in which the words, ”Queen of Hearts, tied to her ap.r.o.n-string,” gave her the drift of the remarks.
”She's plainly trying to give Miss Bonham an unpleasant impression of Lloyd to carry away with her,” thought Betty. ”She's hurt because she wasn't invited to the c.o.o.n hunt, and the other little affairs we had for the bridal party. She never took it into consideration that what would have been perfectly convenient at another time was out of the question when the house was so full of guests and all torn up with preparations for the wedding. Lloyd had all she could do then to think of the guests in the house, without considering those outside. It certainly is a flimsy sort of a friends.h.i.+p that can't overlook a seeming neglect like that or make due allowances. Besides, if she feels slighted, why doesn't she keep it to herself, and not try to get even by giving Miss Bonham a false impression of her? Rob is right. Boys don't stoop to such mean little things. In the first place they don't magnify trifles into big grievances, and go around feeling slighted and hurt over nothing.”
”Here comes the train!” called Ra.n.a.ld, seizing Miss Bonham's suit-case and leading the way to the door. There was a moment of hurried good-byes, a fluttering of handkerchiefs, a waving of hats. Then the train pa.s.sed on, leaving the group gazing after it.
”What are we going to do now?” asked Rob. ”Will you all come over to the store and have some peanuts?”
”No, you're all coming up home with me,” said Lloyd, ”Miss Allison and everybody. I saw Alec carrying some watahmelons into the ice-house, and they'll be good and cold by this time. We'll cut them out on the lawn.”
Ra.n.a.ld excused himself, saying he had promised to take his Aunt Allison to the dressmaker's in the pony-cart, but Allison and Kitty promptly accepted the invitation for themselves and the two lieutenants. Katie Mallard walked on with one and Joyce the other, Rob and Betty bringing up the rear. Lloyd still waited.
”Come on, Bernice,” she urged. ”The watahmelons are mighty fine, and we'd love to have you come.”
”No, dearie,” was the reply. ”I've a lot of things to do to-day, but I'll see you to-night at the darky wedding.”
”I'm mighty sorry you can't come,” called Lloyd, then hurried on to catch up with the others. As she joined Rob and Betty she felt intuitively they had changed their subject of conversation at her approach. She had caught the question, ”Then are you going to warn her?”
and Betty's reply, ”What's the use? It would only make her feel bad.”
”What's that about warnings?” asked Lloyd, catching Betty's hand and swinging it as she walked along beside her.