Nan nodded her head at this last. It was true that Linda had done a very risky thing in meddling with the steam valve in the basement of the school.
“Yes, but even so, I’m going to be nicer to her in the spring term,” Nan resolved. “Maybe she has some good qualities we don’t know about.”
“Nan means,” Rhoda interpreted, “that there is some good in all of us. Perhaps she is right. Perhaps Linda has never been given a chance.”
Bess snorted very inelegantly. “You can all turn the other cheek if you want to,” she insisted, “but I’m not going to. She’s just a mean hateful old thing, and I don’t care what you think, Nan. I’m going to watch her. You had better do it too, if you’re going to live to go to Europe.”
At this, Grace giggled. “Nan could live through almost anything, I believe,” she said. “Mama says she never knew a girl who at Nan’s age had had so many adventures and had come up so smiling from all of them. Dad agrees. He thinks Nan has a charmed life, that she has at least nine lives—”
“Like a cat?” Nan interrupted, for she was embarrassed at this praise of herself. Now, her eyes twinkled as the girls all laughed. Nan was really a charming girl. Her clear brown eyes were frank and trusting. Her brown, bobbed hair, cut in a wind-blown style and brushed so that it shone and looked soft and silky, gave her an almost boyish appearance. But her quick sympathy, her readiness to help anyone in distress, and her fondness for children made a real girl of her. Everyone liked her, but Bess Harley liked her most of all.
Bess was a pretty girl with curly hair. Though indulgent parents had spoiled her so that she was inclined to over-value the luxuries money could buy, her constant association with Nan through the years had somewhat remedied that. However, this New Year’s Eve, she did feel out of sorts. The thought of being separated from Nan was still new to her. Moreover, she was envious. She had heard some place that Linda Riggs was going to spend the summer in Europe, and she did not want Linda to go any place that she couldn’t go. Now, as she sat quietly, after expressing herself on the matter of that overly proud young person, she was really thinking of ways and means of persuading her parents to let her go to Europe, too.
“Anyway,” Grace brought the girls back to the subject of Linda, “maybe Nan is right. So, I hereby resolve,” she said solemnly, “to be nice to Linda Riggs for one whole month, the month of January. During that time, I will not say one mean thing to her.”
“Bravo!” Nan applauded. “And you, Rhoda?”
But it was not Linda Riggs that troubled the pretty southern girl. She had really never had any direct contact with her. So when Nan turned to her, she began, “Well, Linda doesn’t really annoy me. I simply overlook her. But there is something else that does bother me. You all know that when I first came to Lakeview Hall, it was hard for me to fit into your way of doing things.”