“Yes,” said Dolly, almost ready to cry. “This is my Pinkie, and I love her, and now she’s the little girl Aunt Rachel said we couldn’t play with.”
“Why not?” cried Dick, who had forgotten the Middleton ban.
Phyllis took up the story.
“I don’t know the beginning of it,” she said; “but my mother, and Miss Rachel Dana don’t like each other, and won’t go to each other’s houses. And when I heard a little girl had come here to live, I wanted to come over, but mother wouldn’t let me.”
“And Aunt Rachel forbade me to go to your house, too,” put in Dolly. “I think it’s awful for grown-up ladies to get mad like that.”
“They’ve been mad for lots of years,” said Jack Fuller. “I’ve heard my mother talk about it to the other ladies. They call it the Dana-Middleton feud.”
“What was it about?” asked Dick.
“Nobody knows,” replied Jack. “At least, none of us children. Of course, when there weren’t any children at the Dana house, we didn’t care anything about it; but now, it’s pretty if you two can’t play with the Middletons! Why, they go to our parties and our school and our Sunday school, and our picnics and everything! I guess Miss Dana and Mrs. Middleton’ll have to make up now.”
“They won’t,” said Phyllis, mournfully. “I heard mother and father talking about it. And they said I mustn’t come over here, or speak to Dolly or anything. And then, yesterday, I did come over here to the wood,—it’s right next to our last orchard,—and Dolly and I had such fun, I thought I’d come every day, and not tell anybody. But after I went to bed last night, I thought about it, and I know it’s wrong; so I’m not going to do it any more. I just came to-day to tell Dolly so. And after I go home, I’m going to confess to mother about it.”
Phyllis’s eyes were full of tears, and as she finished speaking, and Dolly’s arms went round her, both girls cried in their mutual affliction.