“Don’t mind those clothes,” she said apologetically. “Pile your own right on top of ’em. We’ll get ’em put away somehow.”
But there was no time then, as they must dress for dinner, and the gong would sound shortly.
Madeleine greatly admired Betty’s pretty rose-colored voile trimmed with delicate lace, and she was loud in her praise of Betty’s simple bits of jewelry.
“Oh, what a lovely locket!” she cried. “Let me wear it to-night, won’t you? I’d love to!”
Betty hesitated; she disliked to refuse her friend’s first request, but she couldn’t let any one else wear her locket, with her mother’s picture in it, too.
“I want to wear that myself,” she said frankly; “I always wear it afternoons. But you may wear my bangle instead, if you like.”
“Oh, yes, I’d love to,” and Madeleine slipped the pretty gold bangle on her wrist. “Won’t you lend me a hair-ribbon, Elizabeth, too? I see you’ve plenty of them, and mine are so old.”
“Certainly,” said Betty, willingly offering her box of new ribbons. Madeleine selected a pair of wide red ones, and gaily tied them on her black curls. As it happened, these were Betty’s favorite ribbons, and she had no other red ones, but she was wearing white ones herself, and she said nothing.
Madeleine helped herself to Betty’s cologne-water, and made free with several of her toilet appurtenances, and at last, after saying, “Oh, my dear, please lend me a handkerchief; mine are full of holes!” they went down-stairs.
Dinner was an awful ordeal. The girls sat at long tables, each headed by a teacher, and were expected to converse on light topics. Betty rather envied the ease with which most of them uttered trivial commonplaces, but she couldn’t help feeling that their accents and shrill little notes of laughter were artificial. Without even formulating her own thoughts, she felt that the girls were all self-conscious and critical of one another, and she conceived a sudden and violent antipathy to the whole atmosphere of the school that she knew she could never conquer.