“If it bothers you, how do you suppose it makes me feel?”
“We have grown close to each other, haven’t we?” mused Doris. “Do you know, I never dreamed I could make so dear a friend in so short a time. I have plenty of acquaintances and good comrades, but usually it takes me years to make a real friend. How did you manage to make me care so much for you, Sally?”
“ ‘Just because you’re you’!” laughed Sally, quoting a popular song. “But do you realize, Doris Craig, what a different girl I’ve become since I knew and cared for you?”
She was indeed a different girl, as Doris had to admit. To begin with, she looked different. The clothes she wore were neat, dainty and appropriate, indicating taste and care both in choosing and wearing them. Her parents were comparatively well-to-do people in the village and could afford to dress her well and give her all that was necessary, within reason. It had been mainly lack of proper care, and the absence of any incentive to seem her best, that was to blame for the original careless Sally. And not only her looks, but her manners and English were now as irreproachable as they had once been provincial and faulty.
“Why, even my thoughts are different!” she suddenly exclaimed, following aloud the line of thought they had both been unconsciously pursuing. “You’ve given me more that’s worth while to think about, Doris, in these three months, than I ever had before in all my life.”
“I’m sure it wasn’t I that did it,” modestly disclaimed Doris, “but the books I happened to bring along and that you wanted to read. If you hadn’t wanted different things yourself, Sally, I don’t believe you would have changed any, so the credit is all yours.”
“Do you remember the day you first quoted ‘The Ancient Mariner’ to me?” laughed Doris. “I was so astonished I nearly tumbled out of the boat. It was the lines, ‘We were the first that ever burst into that silent sea,’ wasn’t it?”
“Yes, they are my favorite lines in it,” replied Sally. “And with all the poems I’ve read and learned since, I love that best, after all.”