"He's a very good player," said Isobel. "He gets more runs than anybody else, and it's terribly hard to put him out."
"Jermyn would bowl him first ball!" returned Blanche scornfully. "Perhaps you've never seen Eton boys play? I always go to Lord's to watch the match with Harrow: it's as different from this as a first-class theatre is from a troupe of niggers."
"Why, but this is only a children's mixed team," said Isobel. "Of course some of the little ones scarcely know how to play at all. We just send them very easy balls, and let them try.—You're surely not going, Belle. Tea will be ready in a quarter of an hour. Mrs. Rokeby's boiling the kettle on a spirit lamp over by the rocks."
"We don't want any, thank you," said Belle, rising from the boat and brushing some sand off her dress. "Mrs. Oppenheim is going to take us to tea at the new café. I hear they've capital ices and a band. The Wilsons were telling me about it yesterday. They say you meet everybody there from four to five o'clock."
"Shall I see you on the Parade this evening?" called Isobel, as Belle strolled away in the direction of Silversands, her arm closely locked in Blanche's.
"I don't think so," replied Belle, without turning her head, and saying something in a whisper to Blanche, which evidently caused the latter much amusement, for she broke into a suppressed peal of laughter, and glancing round at Isobel, went along shaking her shoulders with mirth.
Isobel stood looking after the retreating couple with a lump in her throat and a curious sick sensation in her heart. She could not yet quite realize that Belle did not desire her companionship—only that somehow Blanche had carried off her friend, and that everything was completely spoilt. Between Blanche and herself she recognized there was an instinctive hostility. Blanche had been so openly rude, and had treated both her and the Sea Urchins with such evident contempt, that Isobel, not usually a quarrelsome child, had felt all her spirit rise up within her in passionate indignation.
"Why does she come here to make fun of us?" she asked herself hotly. "We had such jolly times before. None of the others were ever nasty like this—not even Aggie Wright or Hugh Rokeby. Why can't she keep with her own family? And why, oh, why does Belle seem to like her so much?"
Next day being Sunday, Isobel only saw her friend at a distance in church, Mrs. Stewart, who had a suspicion of what was happening, suggesting that they should pass the afternoon with their books on the cliffs, thinking it would be better to leave Belle severely alone, and give no opportunity for a meeting. On this account she spent Monday in Ferndale, asking Hilda Chester to accompany them, and taking the two children to hear the band play on the pier, and to an entertainment afterwards in the pavilion. The Rokebys came on Tuesday morning, inviting Isobel to join them in a boating excursion, from which they did not return until late in the evening, so that for the first time since the beginning of their acquaintance the namesakes had not spoken to each other for three whole days. Isobel had borne the separation as well as she could, but she longed to see Belle again with the full force of her loving nature. She invented many excuses for the conduct of the latter, who, she thought, was no doubt regretting her coldness, and would be as delighted as ever to meet. If only she could get Belle to herself, without Blanche, all would surely be right between them, and the friendship as warm as it had been before.
"May I ask her to tea, mother?" she begged, with so wistful a look in her gray eyes, and such a suspicious little quiver at the corners of her mouth, that Mrs. Stewart consented, somewhat against her better judgment.