“I wish you had kept quiet about your long walks to school,” grumbled Daisy Goatby on Friday afternoon, when the long crocodile of the Compton Girls’ School swung along through Sowergate, and, mounting the hill to the Ilkestone promenade, went a long mile across the scorched grass of the lawns on the top of the cliffs, and then turned back inland, to reach the deep little valley of the Sowerbrook.
“Why? Don’t you like walking?” asked Dorothy, who had been revelling in the sea and the sky, and all the unexpectedness of Ilkestone generally.
“I loathe it!” Daisy said with almost vicious energy. She was so fat that the exercise made her hot and uncomfortable; she had a blowsed appearance, and was rather cross.
“That is because you are so fat,” Dorothy laughed, her eyes shining with merriment. “Why don’t you put in half an hour every morning punching in the gym, then do those bar exercises that Hazel and Rhoda were doing yesterday? You would soon find walking easier.”
“Why, I take no end of exercise,” grumbled Daisy. “What with tennis, and hockey, and bowls, and swimming, one is on all the time. My fat is not the result of self-indulgence; it is disease.”
“And chocolates,” laughed Dorothy, who had seen the way in which her companion had been stuffing with sweets ever since they had started out.
“I am obliged to take a little of something to keep my strength up,” Daisy said in a plaintive tone; then she burst out with quite disconcerting suddenness, “What makes Rhoda Fleming have such a grouch against you, seeing that you were strangers until the other day?”
Dorothy felt her colour rise in spite of herself, but she only said quietly, “You had better ask her.”
“Bless you, I did that directly I found out how she did not love you,” answered Daisy, breathing hard—they were mounting a rise now, and the pace tried her.
“Well, and what did she say?” asked Dorothy, whose heart was beating in a very lumpy fashion.