The year passed away uneventfully. Porter and Basil returned to their home for the holidays, but were back again in the autumn, Mrs. Phillips having concluded that it would again be necessary for her to spend the winter in California, as her sister’s health demanded it. There was, therefore, an unbroken circle in the Holmes family. It was Lisa’s last year at school, and she was looking forward to being graduated in June. It was a struggle with her to decide whether or not she should enter college another year. She was divided between her love of pleasure and her desire to do her parents honor by winning distinction in a collegiate course. Lisa had rather a good opinion of her ability, and fancied she could do or be almost anything with little effort on her part. There had been a long rivalry between herself and Margaret Green, and there was great conjecture among the school-girls as to which would be graduated with highest honors,—a question which would not be decided until the very last week of school.
“I shall be mortified to death,” Persis confessed to Basil, “if Lisa does not come out first. I have made such a talk about it. That’s just like me to talk too much, you know. I get excited and carried away, and the first thing I know I’m saying all sorts of things I’d better have left unsaid.”
“Speech is silver, but silence is golden,” replied Basil, who was one of the silent kind himself.
“I know that. I wish I could remember it. I hate to be wordy. I see the fault in others fast enough. Connie is a bit that way. There, I needn’t have said that!”
“You don’t see much of Connie these days.”
“No-o,” doubtfully; “I like Annis best. Grandma once said that the safest kind of a friend to have was one who helps us to do our best, and the unsafest,—that’s not exactly the word, but it will do,—the unsafest the one who doesn’t make it easy for you to do right. And yet, Basil, do you think we ought to keep away from those to whom we might do good?”
“That depends upon how strong we are. You know it would be a sort of a silly thing to do if I were to go with a fellow who was always knocking me down unexpectedly if I hadn’t muscle enough to give him back as good as he sent.”
“That’s so. I didn’t realize that it meant something like that.”
“One doesn’t like to be tumbled over in the mud with a broken head for no reason,” went on Basil, “and yet if we had to fight for honor’s sake it would be right enough to square off.”
“I understand. You’re a real good brother, Basil. How far off we are from our subject; we began with Lisa. I think I shall simply sink to the earth if Margaret comes out ahead.”