“No,” said Stella, silently accepting Ladybird’s unspoken sympathy. “I haven’t a friend in the world, except my grandparents.”
“Why, how funny!” said Ladybird. “I should think you could have lots of friends, you are so pretty and so bright. I’ll be your friend.”
“I think I should like to have you,” said Stella, but slowly, as if considering a weighty matter; “but you see, I am queer about my friends.”
“How?” asked Ladybird.
“Well,” said Stella, wearily, “of course I know all the people in Plainville,—I have lived here a great many years,—but I can’t seem to persuade myself that they are the kind of people I want for my friends. Oh, of course they are nice, good people, you know—”
“Yes, I know,” said Ladybird, nodding her head wisely.
“It isn’t that they’re plain,” Stella went on, “or countrified. I don’t mind those things. But they’re uninteresting. When I go to see them, they just talk about the minister, and the dressmaker, and the village gossip.”
“Yes,” said Ladybird, again nodding her head like an owl, “I know.”
“How do you know, you ridiculous child?” said Stella, laughing. “How old are you, you mountain of knowledge?”
“I do know,” said Ladybird, shaking her thin forefinger at her companion across an intervening apple-twig—“I do know just what it is you want and can’t get,—and I’m twelve.”