CHAPTER X.
"FOUND OUT."
"What makes everybody so snarly this morning?" asked Joyce, looking around on the circle of moody faces. The four girls had been lounging in hammocks and chairs under the trees for several hours, and in all that time scarcely a civil word had been spoken.
"There isn't any reason why we should be cross," Joyce went on. "It's a glorious day, we've had a delicious breakfast and a good ride, and there is the tissue-paper party at Sally Fairfax's to-night to look forward to. But in spite of it all I feel so mean and cross that I want to scratch somebody."
Betty looked up from her book and laughed. "I don't feel snarly, but I've been wondering ever since breakfast what had happened to make you all out of sorts. Lloyd looks as if she had been eating sour pickles, and Eugenia has snapped at everybody who has spoken to her this morning."
"That's a story!" exclaimed Eugenia, tartly, with such a frown that Lloyd began singing in a tantalising tone, "Crosspatch, draw the latch, sit by the fire and spin."
"Oh, hush up!" exclaimed Eugenia, crossly.
"Why, Lloyd," said Mrs. Sherman, coming up just then in time to hear Lloyd's song and Eugenia's answer, "you are surely not teasing one of your guests! I am surprised!"
To every one's astonishment, Lloyd flopped over in the hammock, and, covering her face with her arm, began to cry.