But when she went up to her room for the last time that evening she found on her table two letters, and both of them brought comfort. One was from her mother. It was full of words of love and bade Eleanor be a good girl and give her cousin no trouble. Her papa was very tired after his journey, but hoped he would begin to improve as soon as he was rested.
The other letter was from Rock Hardy, and among other things it said: "Boarding-school isn't much like home, and I'm having a pretty tough time, but I'm only telling this to you, for I wouldn't be so mean as to bother mamma about it. I guess I can stand it if the other fellows can." And these words set Eleanor thinking.
CHAPTER IV
A New Doll
Mrs. Murdoch was very cool to Eleanor after this, and Olive followed suit, while Donald did everything in his power to annoy his cousin. Jessie, however, was too sweet-tempered to make herself disagreeable, and little Alma was too much of a baby to be influenced against any one who was always kind to her and ready to amuse her. Mrs. Murdoch kept Bubbles strictly under her eye, and would not allow her to take Alma out of her sight, a fact which Eleanor resented more than Bubbles did. "As if Bubbles would be cruel to a little baby," she said to Jessie.
"But you know she beat Don dreadfully," Jessie replied.
"She didn't hurt him hardly one bit, and besides, he was going to strike me."
"Well, you know he didn't strike you," returned Jessie, and Eleanor felt helpless to argue the point.
Rock's letter had cheered her and strengthened her. If Rock would not tell his mother that he was having a hard time, neither would she tell her mother about her worries, for she was sure that her dearest mamma had more to trouble her than had Mrs. Heath, Dallas Rock's mother, and the child bore Olive's snubs and Mrs. Murdoch's cold looks with open defiance, but she would not tell any one but Rock; to him she wrote quite a long letter.
"It is so dreadful here now," she wrote. "My little house in the yard is all full of all sorts of stuff, and it is oh, so dirty, for the boys that Don brings in there do just as they please. Cousin Ellen is very partikular about mamma's house, but she don't care what comes of mine. I'm not going to worry mamma, Rock, but I wish you and Florence were here instead of Don and Olive. Jessie is a right nice little girl but she is a good deal littler than I am." These and other things Eleanor wrote to Rock and he answered in kind, so that Eleanor felt that they were comrades in misery as they had been comrades in pleasure the summer before.