Helen took stock of her as she advanced, a prim little figure dressed with exceeding neatness. Her face was small and well-featured, and she had pretty dark eyes and smooth coils of brown hair, but her lips were thin and their expression unpleasing. She walked, too, with a short, ungraceful step, and there was an air of demure superiority about her which was scarcely calculated to impress favourably those of her own age at least. "I don't like her," said Helen to herself as Agatha approached and held out her hand with a patronizing air, observing:
"I suppose you are Helen Desmond?"
"I suppose I am," returned Helen a little mischievously, sitting up in her hammock, but still swinging herself slowly to and fro.
Agatha's thin lips tightened. She had been annoyed that Helen had not come forward to meet her; now she began to think her new acquaintance not only ill-mannered but impertinent. "I daresay you don't know who I am," she went on loftily.
"Oh, yes! I do. You are Agatha Bayden."
"How do you know that I am Agatha?"
"Because I saw you on Sunday boxing your little brother's ears behind the churchyard wall. One of the choir boys said, 'That's Miss Agatha.' I'm not sure he didn't say Agatha."
Agatha turned crimson.
"I have a message for you," she said, scorning a direct reply. "You are to come to lunch with us to-day, and to spend the afternoon with us."
"Who says so?" asked Helen not very courteously.