“No; if I go, I shall give you up entirely, and get a new chum up there. I can’t have my most intimate friend a million miles away. And you know our people wouldn’t agree to that six months business.”
“You’ll get a new chum! Dorinda Fayre, I think you’re the most awful girl I ever saw! I believe you want to go to your horrid old Buffalo, and have a girl with a shirtwaist on, for your intimate friend, and a band around her forehead!”
“Oh, hush up, Dotty! I didn’t mean that, and you know it! But I’m beside myself, I don’t know what I’m saying!”
And then the two girls gave way to such desperate and uncontrollable sobbing, that Trudy heard them and came to their room.
“Dolly! Dolly!” she exclaimed. “Oh, you poor little girl! Don’t cry so, darling. Try to stop,—you’ll make yourself ill. Dotty, be quiet, dear.”
Trudy’s soft voice calmed the turbulent ones a little, and she went on talking.
“Listen, Dollykins. I don’t want to leave Berwick, either. I have lots of friends here—”
“And beaux,” put in Dotty, suddenly realising Trudy’s trials, too.
“Yes,” Trudy agreed, smiling, “and beaux. But probably beaux grow in Buffalo, and friends of other sorts too. Now, I don’t in the least undervalue what it means to you two girls to part, but, Dolly, it can’t be helped. Father has to go. Now, oughtn’t we to help him, by unselfishly forgetting our wishes, and going cheerfully? That’s the only way we can help Dad, and I think it’s our duty to do it.”
“I know it is,” sobbed Dolly, “but I always did hate to do my duty!”