“I’ll make you popular,—I will honest!”
Dolly looked very pleading. Her little face looked up into Bernice’s with a wistful, hopeful smile. Her hands were clasped in the intensity of her feeling, and her voice quivered as she made her plea.
Bernice looked at her. “I don’t know why I should do this for you, Dolly Fayre,” she said, at last. “You’re the most popular girl in Berwick, you and Dotty Rose. Now, if you go away, I’ll stand a better chance of getting in your crowd, in your place, than if you stay here.”
Dolly hadn’t thought of this. Nor did it strike her at the moment what a selfish and self-seeking spirit Bernice showed. She knit her brows as she thought deeply what to say next.
“You see,” Bernice went on, “I’ve always wanted to be in your set. It’s the nicest set of all. And when I was in Grammar School of course I couldn’t, but now we’re all in High, I want to be one of you. And I’ll do anything I can to get there. But I think I’d stand a better chance with you away. Then I’d be friends with Dotty Rose in your place, maybe.”
Dolly looked aghast. Such presumption! But the absurdity of the idea brought her to her senses.
“Not much you wouldn’t, Bernie!” she said. “Dot is willing to do a lot for you if I stay here. But she knows I’m saying all this to you, and if you don’t help me about Father’s position with the road, you can just bet Dotty Rose won’t have anything to do with you, nor will any one else in our set!”
“Look here, Dolly, isn’t this what the boys call a ‘hold-up’?”
Dolly laughed. “It did sound like that, but listen, Bernice. It’s a straight proposition. You want to be in our set, really in it and of it. Well, I’ll see to it that you get there, if you’ll coax your father to let my father stay here. That’s all, and I don’t think it’s mean or hold-uppish. I think it’s a fair deal between us. I don’t know what my father would say if he knew I asked you, but even though he might think it undignified or silly, he couldn’t say it was really wrong. Now, could he?”