Dotty slammed another log on top of the first one, took the hearth brush and flirted the ashes about a little, took the tongs, and fussed about with those, and then, adjusting the fender with meticulous care, went back to her seat, and again silence took up its sceptre.
The very light-ticking clock could be plainly heard, indeed it sounded as loud as the click of a typewriter in the gloomy atmosphere. The girls turned farther away from each other until they were fairly back to back.
Dolly was all the time growing more and more inclined to tears; not tears of sorrow, so much as of indignation, of weariness and of general nerve strain.
Dotty, tearless, with no inclination to cry, became more and more ruffled with anger at Dolly, and a vague half-recognised jealousy of Bernice; as well as a sort of remorse at her own unkindness to her chum.
But what could be done? Girls who are “mad at” each other can not violate the age-old canons of not speaking, and to speak first was the deepest humiliation.
So the two little ninnies sat there. Dotty’s feet went to sleep, one after the other. Dolly’s arms stiffened and relaxed in turn. The minutes dragged by like hours. Lessons were not learned, for how can one put one’s mind on the Ptolemies or their successors, when one is mad at one’s friend?
At last, somehow, the motionless hour-hand of the hammering clock managed to worm its way to twelve, a permissible, if not usual, hour to go home.
Simultaneously, and with the same air of preoccupied intentness, both girls put away books and papers, and pulled on her coat sleeves.
Dolly dawdled over her desk a moment, hoping Dotty would speak. Dotty looked at the back of Dolly’s head, decided it still looked stubborn, and turned away.
Together, yet miles apart, they went out of the door. Dotty locked it with her key, she was always the quicker one at that, and then, with an assumed lightness of step, the two silly young things ran across their respective lawns and into their respective homes.