"It isn't that, Dolly; we're not her teachers, and I don't care what she does,—to other people. But she needn't think she can do a thing like that, and act as if we didn't know anything, when we told her she was wrong, and then when she finds she is wrong to go and fix it up on the sly and pretend she was right all along! No-sir-ee! I won't stand for it. I'll show her up in all her meanness and deceit and I'll do it before the boys, too. She ought to be made to feel cheap! The idea!"
Dolly waited in silence until Dotty's wrath had spent itself. She had known Dotty would act like this, but she hoped to calm her justifiable anger.
"Well, all right, Dot," she said at last; "then if you still persist in quarrelling with Pauline about this thing, and if you won't agree not to say anything to her about it, then I'm going to ask you not to, just for my sake. I don't often ask you a favour seriously, Dotty Rose, but I do now. If you're a friend of mine and if you really care anything about me, won't you promise, just because I ask it, not to say anything to Pauline about those caps?"
The two Shepherdesses faced each other in silence. Both were sitting cross-legged in Turkish fashion on the wide divan, and as they had not turned on their room lights, only the moonlight that streamed across the ocean illumined the two earnest faces.
Fair-haired Dolly was pale in her earnestness and her blue eyes looked beseechingly at her friend.
The black-haired Shepherdess was flushed with anger. Her crook had fallen to the floor and she had tossed her hat beside it. Her black eyes snapped and her curly head shook as she refused Dolly's request. But the pleading voice kept on, until at last kindness conquered, and Dotty Rose gave in.
"All right, you dear old thing," she cried, as she grabbed Dolly round the neck, "you've a Heavenly disposition, and I'm a horrid, ugly thing, but I'll do as you say, because you ask me to."
"You're not ugly, Dotty, a bit; only you have a high temper, and your sense of justice makes you feel like getting even with people. And I don't say you're not right. Why, of course there is such a thing as righteous indignation, and this may be the place for it. Only, I do want to have my way this time. You see, we're going home day after to-morrow, and very likely we'll never see the Cliftons again, after we leave here. They don't come here every summer like we do. And I hate to spoil these two last days with a horrid squabble, when we six have been so nice and chummy and pleasant all the time we've been here. You needn't have much to do with Pauline, if you don't want to, but just for two days, can't you just be decently polite to her, and not say anything about this business?"
"I can and I will," said Dotty, heartily; "but you needn't think, old lady, that it's because I'm a meek and mild little lamb, and don't feel like telling that girl what I think of her! No, sir! It's because,—well first because you ask me to; and second, because I'm the guest of you and your people, and it wouldn't be a bit nice of me to stir up an unpleasantness that probably everybody would know about. So, unless Miss Pauline Clifton refers to it herself, she'll never hear of that cap subject from me!"
"You're an old trump, Dotty, and I love you a million bushels! And I'm glad we're going home so soon, and oh, just think! we'll start off to school together, and we'll both go to High School, and we'll have just the same lessons, and we'll be together every day. Dotty Rose, I'm glad I've got you for a friend!"