"Well, I don't care. I always have a room next to you. Her mother isn't here and she won't care."
"You will be next to your sisters," said Mrs. Murdoch.
"I don't want to be next to a pair of giggling girls. I want to be next to you, so I can call you if I have earache or anything."
Mrs. Murdoch looked uncertainly at Eleanor. "Perhaps Eleanor would just as lief be next the girls," she said.
"Mamma said I was to keep my own room," returned Eleanor with rising color. "It has always been my room since I had one."
"Oh, very well," said Mrs. Murdoch. "We'll see about it after a while, Donald." But Donald's black looks did not add to Eleanor's serenity, and she felt that every mouthful of supper would choke her although Sylvy had prepared a specially appetizing meal.
CHAPTER III
Trouble With Donald
Eleanor soon found that her favorite among the Murdoch children would prove to be Jessie. Olive, the eldest girl, was not a very pleasant child, being "touchy," critical, prim, and absorbed in herself. She was fond of reading, but did not enter very heartily into the plays which entertained Eleanor and Jessie. Mrs. Murdoch was a careful housekeeper, and also a careful mother but a very indulgent one, and although she attended most conscientiously to all of Eleanor's creature comforts she did not give her any of the tenderness which she lavished upon her own children, and very soon Eleanor came to feel like an outsider in her own home.
Her refusal to give up her room to Donald won her that spoiled youngster's ill-will, and he never lost an opportunity of teasing her, to Bubbles' great distress, so that finally there was open warfare between the boy and the little colored girl.