“My goodness!” she exclaimed. “I feel like a corked-up bottle of beer,” she continued to herself. “And, my, how sore my lips are! I’ll have to have the glycerin-bottle filled if I am to keep this up. Oh, dear, what a mean creature I am! I have not been near Annis to-day. It is kind of awkward, too, for they all feel so stirred up about her that they will be horrid if I ask her here. Mamma won’t, of course, and grandma will be a love. I’ll find out when Lisa is going out, and then I’ll go. Oh, maybe she can have a wheel now, and we can go all around together. After all, as grandma says, gain often comes from loss. I don’t believe I shall mind the change of affairs so very much. I wonder if the boys know.”
The boys did know. They had been told with much emphasis by Mellicent, who dwelt with feeling upon the pitiable condition to which she personally would be reduced, though, to give her credit, she did mean to be cordial to Annis, and was really glad to discover the kinship. The whole affair appealed strongly to her romantic little soul, and gave her an interesting topic to discuss with Audrey.
Persis found her with the boys playing “parcheesi” in the library.
“I say,” blurted out Porter, without looking up, “why didn’t you let that Brown girl fight her own battles? If you hadn’t been so fierce to get her into the club you would never have known anything about her being your cousin.”
“As if I were so mean as to be sorry,” said Persis. “She’d as good a right and a better one than any of us to join it; and even if she’d never had a single ancestor, she would always be a dear, lovely girl.”
Basil looked up, amused at the fierce little partisan with her remarkable statements and her readiness to take up the cudgels. “Where’s your chip, Perse?” asked Porter, mockingly, for “Perse is always going around with a chip on her shoulder,” he was wont to say.
“Chip, yourself; at least you’re only a blockhead,” retorted Persis, the seal being most certainly no longer upon her lips.
“Ah, what’s the use of squabbling?” interposed Basil, in his slow way. “You did all right, Persis, and I side with you, whatever the others say. They’ll get over it after awhile. Annis is a first-rate sort of a girl, and you were another to take her part.”
Persis shot him a grateful look and sat down to watch the game. The little talk with grandma came back to her, but it was too sacred to be repeated there, and she contented herself with remarking, “Well, anyhow, grandma is content, and so I think we have no right to complain.”
“Well, but if she had never known she would be just as happy,” persisted Porter, “and you’d all be better off.”