“She’s fearful mad, isn’t she?” Daisy said, laughing. “She treats you awful, don’t she?”
“Never mind,” Renfrew said, and then he remembered something that had puzzled him not so painfully; and he wondered if Daisy might shed a light on this. “Daisy, what in the world made you pick on poor little Laurence the way you did?”
“Me?” she asked, surprised. “Why, it was Elsie told us to.”
“That’s it,” Renfrew said. “That’s what I want to know. Laurence was just as nice to her as he could be; he did everything he could think of to please her, and the first chance she got, she set the whole pack of you on him. What did she do a thing like that for?”
Daisy picked a dandelion from the grass and began to eat it. “What?” she inquired.
“What makes Elsie so mean to poor little Laurence Coy?”
“Oh, well,” said Daisy casually, “she likes him best. She likes him best of all the boys in town.” And then, swallowing some petals of the dandelion, she added: “She treats him awful.”
Renfrew looked at her thoughtfully; then his wondering eyes moved slowly upward till they rested once more upon the maple-embowered window over the way, and into his expression there came a hint of something almost hopeful.
“So she does!” he said.