Johnston Annie Fellows - The Little Colonel at Boarding-School стр 10.

Dead silence followed Betty's speech. The Little Colonel walked across the room, picked up her shoe and put it on, jerking the laces savagely. It was the first time that she had ever been angry with Betty, and her wrath was more than Betty could endure.

"Please don't feel hurt, Lloyd," she begged. "I can't bear to have you angry with me. I wouldn't have said a word, only I thought that if it was explained to you how we all felt, you'd be willing to spend a little more time with the others, and gradually they'd get interested in Ida and be nice to her for your sake, and things would go on as they used to, when we all had such good times together."

Again the painful silence, so deep that Betty felt as if a wall had risen between them.

"Please, Lloyd," she begged, with tears in her eyes. But Lloyd, with an air of injured dignity, went on dressing, without a word, until the last bow was tied, and the last pin in place.

"And she knew all the time that Ida is my dearest friend," Lloyd kept saying angrily to herself, as she moved about the room. "I could have forgiven her saying mean things about me , but for her to stand up and say to my very face that she is sorry Ida is in the school, and that her being here spoils all the good times, when she knows what I think of Ida, that is simply a plain insult, and I can nevah feel the same to Betty Lewis again!"

By the time the breakfast-bell rang, both the girls were almost in tears; for the longer Betty's speech rankled in Lloyd's mind the worse it hurt, and the longer the angry silence continued the worse Betty felt.

"It is not like Lloyd to be so unfair," thought Betty. "She's just so blinded by her infatuation for Ida that she can't see my side of the matter at all."

It was on the point of her tongue to speak her thought, but realizing that it would only add fuel to the flame, she checked the impulse, and in the same uncomfortable silence they marched stiffly down the stairs to breakfast.

It was a miserable day for both. To peace-loving Betty it seemed endless. She could hardly keep the tears back when she stood up to recite, and instead of joining the other girls at recess she wandered off with a pencil and note-book. Sitting in one of the swings she wrote some verses about broken friendships that made her cry. They began:

For the last week Lloyd and Ida had spent every recess together, wandering off by themselves to a far corner of the apple orchard, where the trunk of a fallen tree provided them with a seat, and its twisted branches with a rustic screen; but this day when Lloyd needed sympathy and companionship more than on any other, it was suddenly denied her.

Ida had a worried, absent-minded air when she came out at recess after the distribution of the morning mail. She came up to Lloyd in the hall with a grave face. "I am in trouble, Princess," she said, in a low tone. "I'll explain sometime before long, but I must go to my room now. I have an important letter to write."

With heavy forebodings Lloyd wandered back to her desk and sat looking listlessly out of the open window. She could hear laughter and merry voices in conversation outside. Nuts rattled down from the old hickory-tree by the well, and an odour of wild grapes floated in from the vine that trailed over it, where some belated bunches hung too high for any fingers but the frost's to touch. She took no interest in anything.

The afternoon recess passed in the same way. Miss Bina McCannister led the procession when they went for their afternoon walk. Ida had been excused from joining them, so Lloyd walked beside Janie Clung, in stony silence. Betty was in front of them, and Lloyd, almost stepping on her heels, could think of nothing but the remark that had changed her whole day to gall and wormwood. She resented it doubly, now that poor Ida was in some mysterious trouble.

Betty occasionally

cast an anxious glance backward. "She'll surely make up before the sun goes down," she thought. But the sun went down as they strolled homeward, the moon came up, and lights twinkled from all the seminary windows. The supper-bell rang, and a horde of hungry girls poured into the dining-room, but through all the cheerful clatter of dishes and hum of voices, Lloyd kept her dignified silence toward Betty unbroken. Ida had evidently been crying, and had little to say. She left the table before the others were through.

When Betty went to her room for the study hour, she found Lloyd sitting with her elbows on the table before the lamp, seemingly so absorbed in her history lesson that she did not notice the opening of the door. With a sigh Betty sank into a chair on the opposite side of the table, and drew her arithmetic toward her, but she could not fix her mind on the next day's problems. She was rehearsing a dozen different ways in which to open a conversation, and trying to screw her courage to the point of beginning.