She went back to her sister, and established herself in her lap, putting one arm around her neck and stretching out her feet to the warmth of the fire. "It was Dorothy," she said.
"That was quite evident, my dear," returned Celia. "What was it you wouldn't tell her?"
"Oh, Dorothy is such a goose. She was afraid I had gotten to like some of the Overlea girls better than I do her. Just because I wrote to her about Reliance and Alcinda and all of them. Just as if I couldn't like more than one girl. Don't you think it is silly, sister, for anyone to want you to have no other friend, I mean no other best friend? Of course I love Dorothy dearly, but I love Jennie, too, and I am very fond of Netty Black, and, oh, lots of girls. Are you that way about Agnes, Celia?"
Celia felt a pang of self-reproach, for it must be admitted that she had felt a little jealous of the new friends Agnes was making at college. "I don't suppose I should be?" she answered after a pause. "I suppose it is very selfish and unfair to feel that way about it. Mother says it is very conceited of a person to think she can satisfy every need of a friend, and that it shows only love of self, and not love of your friend, when you want to exclude others from her friendship, and I am sure I don't want to be either selfish or conceited, and I should hate to be called a jealous person."
"Do you think Dorothy is conceited and selfish?"
"I don't think she means to be, but when she wants to deprive you of good times with other girls, or is jealous of your friendship for them, she is encouraging conceit and selfishness. I'm glad you asked me about the way I feel toward Agnes, for it makes me see that I am by no means the true friend I ought to be. If I loved her as I should, I'd want her to have all the good times, all the love, all the benefit she could get from others, and I mean to fight against any other feeling but the right one. I don't believe my little sister will be the jealous kind," she said hugging Edna up.
"If you see me getting that way, I hope you won't let me," returned Edna earnestly.
"There's Dorothy now," said Celia, putting down the plump little figure from her lap. And Edna ran out to greet her friend.
There was so much to talk about, so many things to show, that Dorothy must needs stay to lunch. A little later, over came Margaret McDonald to say "How do you do" and to bring some flowers from her mother's greenhouse. Edna's tongue ran so fast and she had so much to tell that the afternoon seemed all too short. Dorothy and Margaret, too, had their own affairs to talk about, and it was dark before the two little visitors were ready to go.
The next excitement was the coming of her father, for whom Dorothy watched and who appeared almost gladder than anyone that his wife and little girl were at home again. "This is something like," he said as he came in, his face wreathed in smiles.