“She said that you were the most untruthful person she had ever met, and it was not safe to believe a word you said,” blurted out Daisy, with a sidelong look at Dorothy just to see how she would take it.
Dorothy flushed, and her eyes were angry, but she answered in a serene tone, “If I said I was not untruthful, it would not help much; it would only be my word against Rhoda’s. The only thing to do is to let the matter rest; time will show whether she is right or wrong.”
“Are you going to sit down under it like that?” cried Daisy, aghast. “Why, it will look as if she was right.”
“What can I do but sit down under it?” asked Dorothy with an impatient ring in her tone. “If I were a boy I might fight her, of course.”
“Talking of fighting,” burst out Daisy eagerly, “Blanche Felmore, who is in the Lower Fifth, told me this morning that your brother Tom has had a scrap with her brother Bobby, and Bobby is so badly knocked out that he has been moved to the san. There is a bit of news for you!”
“Oh, I am sorry!” exclaimed Dorothy, looking acutely distressed. “I hate for Tom to get into such scraps, and it is horrid to think of him hurting some one so badly.”
“Oh, as to that, if he had not hurt Bobby, he would have been pretty considerably bashed up himself,” replied Daisy calmly. “Bobby Felmore is ever so much bigger than your brother—he is in the Sixth, and captain of the football team, a regular big lump of a boy, and downright beefy as to muscle and all that. The wonder to me is that Tom was able to lick him; it must have been that he had more science than Bobby, and in a fight like that, science counts for more than mere weight.”
“What made them fight?” asked Dorothy, a shiver going the length of her spine. It seemed to her little short of disastrous that Tom should get into trouble thus early in the term.
Daisy gave a delighted giggle, and her tone was downright sentimental when she went on to explain. “Tom is most fearfully crushed on Rhoda Fleming; did you know it? We used to make no end of fun of them last term. Tom is such a kid, and Rhoda is nearly two years older than he is; all the same he was really soft about her. They usually danced together on social evenings, they shared cakes and sweets and all that sort of thing, and they were so all-round silly that we got no end of fun out of the affair. Of course we thought it was all off when Rhoda was leaving; but now that she has come back for another year it appears to have started again stronger than ever.”
“But how can it have started?” asked Dorothy in surprise. “We only came on Tuesday—this is Friday; we have not met any of the boys yet.”