“My goodness gracious!” exclaimed Clementine, “don’t you know why the girls don’t chum with you?”
“No,” said Patty, her amazement and curiosity rising above all other sentiments; “and if you know, I wish for pity’s sake you’d tell me.”
“Why,” said Clementine, “it’s only because you’re such an inseparable chum of Lorraine Hamilton’s. The girls can’t bear her; she is so disagreeable and doleful and generally unpleasant. We’ve tried our best; she’s been here two years, you know, but we simply can’t like her. And so, when you came with her and seemed to be such a desperate friend of hers, why of course we couldn’t take you up without taking her, too. And, too, we thought that since you were so terribly intimate with her, you probably weren’t any nicer than she is. But I soon came to the conclusion that you weren’t a bit like her and I want awfully to be friends with you, and so do lots of the other girls. But when I asked you to walk with me yesterday, you said no, you’d rather walk with Lorraine, and I felt myself decidedly out of it.”
“I’m sorry about that,” said Patty impulsively; “I was horrid, I know; but, you see, I had felt so lonely and neglected all the week that somehow yesterday I got my spunk up, and I just felt like hurting somebody to make up for the way they had hurt me. I was awfully sorry about it afterwards.”
“Oh, that’s all right,” said Clementine; “don’t think of it again. And don’t leave the school, will you? Try it another week, anyhow; I’m sure you’ll like it when you get started straight.”
“I think I shall,” said Patty; “anyway, I’ll try it one week more. I’m not a baby, you know, but it was horrid.”
“Yes, I know; but just you wait until next week and see.”
CHAPTER VII
SOME NEW FRIENDS
“Well, Patty,” said Mr. Fairfield, as they sat in their pleasant library waiting for dinner-time; “the week is up, and I suppose you have shaken the dust of the Oliphant school off of your feet for the last time.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, Mr. Man,” said Patty, smiling; “I’ve decided to try it for another week.”