“Pooh, I don’t care if they do. Bernice hasn’t any mother, and her father is a stern, grumpy old thing, and I am sorry for her, and I am going to do anything I can to help her have a good time, and I am going to coax Grace Rawlins to ask her to the Hallowe’en party! So there, now, Miss Dorothy Rose, you can put that in your pipe and smoke it!”
When Dolly was in earnest, she was very much so, and Dotty well knew there was no use combating her in this mood. So she changed her tactics, and said, laughingly, “Well, don’t let us quarrel about it anyway. And it’s time to go home now. Come on.”
“No, I won’t come on, till you say you’ll help me in my plan. If you and I both ask Grace to ask Bernie, she’ll do it. But if I ask her, and then you go to her, and ask her not to, she won’t do it. And I know that’s just what you’ll do!”
As a matter of fact, that was exactly what Dotty had intended to do. In fact, she had already planned in her quick-working mind, to telephone the moment she got home, to Grace, and ask her not to consent to Dolly’s request. It wasn’t that Dotty had such rooted objections to Bernice, but she was unattractive and stiff, and, moreover, exceedingly critical. And too, Dotty didn’t care so especially about the party, but she didn’t want Bernice included in the six girls who made up “their crowd,” and if Dolly took her up so desperately, first thing they knew, she would be in the “crowd” and she would be all the time coming to Treasure House, and—here was the rub,—Dotty feared, way down deep in her inmost heart, that Bernice might cut her out with Dolly, and that would be the crowning tragedy! It was scarcely possible, of course, but Dolly took strange notions sometimes, and Dotty was taking no chances on such a catastrophe.
“All right, I’ll promise not to say anything to Grace at all, about it. But I won’t promise to coax her to ask Bernice, for I don’t want her to. Aw, Dollyrinda, let up on that crazy scheme. It’s only a whim. And don’t you see, if you get her asked there, and she doesn’t have a good time, she’ll wish she hadn’t come after all. And so you’ll be giving her a disappointment instead of a pleasure.”
“But she would have a good time. I’d see that she did.”
“Yes, you would! And how? Why, you’d ask the boys to be nice to her, and dance with her and everything. And—would they do it? They would not! Did they do it, when you asked them at the High School Dance? They did not!”
“How do you know?”
“Lollie told me. He said it was ducky of you to try to be so nice to her, but it wouldn’t go down. The boys just simply plain won’t,—and you know it.”
“Isn’t it mean of them, Dot? Don’t you think it is?”