"You dear, I'd love it! I shall have to give you something in exchange, though, or else it will be unlucky. What will you have?" And Connie turned out the very miscellaneous contents of her pockets, displaying various stumps of lead pencil, a much worn indiarubber, a buttonhook, two or three dominoes, a walnut shell, some acorn cups, a stone with a hole in it, a whistle, a sticky piece of toffee, and a calendar.
"I don't want any of them," said Sylvia, shaking her head.
"But you must. Knives cut love, and we shall quarrel if you don't. The calendar's not much good; it's last year's, and I only kept it for the picture of the dog on the back. But have this," pressing one of the pencils into her hand. "It's the longest piece I have, and rather a nice soft one."
"Let us try putting our pips in the fire," said Nina. "You name one after yourself, and another after someone you like, and then say:
'If you hate me, pop and fly;
If you love me, burn and die,'
and see whether you and the person you have chosen will stick to each other or not. I'm going to try Evelyn Hastings."
"Is she your latest?" enquired Marian.
"I think she's perfectly beautiful. She let me carry her umbrella for her this morning, and said I might do it to-morrow if I wanted. May Spencer never speaks to me now."
"I should think she's tired of you. You must have been such a nuisance always clinging on to her arm. Why can't you let the first class alone? They don't want us."
"They mayn't want you, but they want me," said Nina, whose adoration of the big girls was a perpetual joke in her class. "I held Evelyn's wool yesterday, and pulled off her goloshes, and she never even asked you."