This was not true, but as Augusta always believed anything she heard, she now believed this and many more of Gladys’s unpleasant tales about the little girls from Upper Michigan and passed them on to her own particular friends; so, in the course of time, Jean, Mabel, Marjory, Bettie; and even Henrietta, whom Gladys had not known in Lakeville, were puzzled and grieved by the odd, unfriendly ways of some of their once cordial schoolmates.
Isabelle Carew, for instance, snubbed Mabel quite heartlessly at times. Attractive little Grace Allen no longer spent her leisure moments with her classmate Marjory; but chummed instead with Ruth Dennis. Alice Bailey no longer wept on Jean’s shoulder during the Sunday night hymns but transferred her tears to Hazel Benton’s convenient collar bone.
As for Augusta Lemon, convinced that the Lakeville girls were no fit associates for any really nice girl, she avoided them as much as possible and became more and more friendly with gum-chewing Gladys. And, as usual, Lillian Thwaite always followed as closely as possible in Augusta’s footsteps.
Losing Augusta and Lillian was not exactly a calamity. Augusta was rather an insipid maiden, with no sense of humor, and the bright little girls from Lakeville had considered her something of a bore. And Lillian was just a silly little person of no great consequence. Still, it was disconcerting and not quite pleasant to be dropped so suddenly, as Marjory said, “even by a sheep like Augusta or a goose like Lillian.”
Fortunately, Sallie Dickinson, Maude Wilder, Cora Doyle, Victoria Webster and little Jane Pool, none of whom admired Gladys, were still friendly; and there were others.
Just now, too, one of the Lakeville girls was having another trouble. As you know, mail time for Sallie Dickinson was always rather a trying time. If Charles returned from the post-office early enough, Sallie opened the bag in the school room and read aloud the name on each envelope as she passed it down to its owner. If Charles happened to be late, Sallie delivered the letters at the girls’ doors.
In either case, there were no letters for Sallie, no little packages from home—because she had no home—no little surprises like those that brought delighted squeals from her more fortunate schoolmates. Many of the more selfish older girls seemed to take Sallie’s letterless condition very much for granted but the Lakeville girls were decidedly sorry for her. At times, indeed, their tender hearts quite ached for Sallie.
But now Sallie was not the only sufferer for lack of mail. For weeks and weeks and weeks—eight of them to be exact—Mabel had had no letter from her father and mother who were in Germany. There had been postals from along the way and one announcing their arrival in Berlin and that was all.
Mabel possessed a dangerous imagination. It was now hard at work. She looked at poor old Abbie and at Sallie of the wistful eyes and shuddered. Was she, too, in danger of becoming a boarding school orphan? Would she have to wear faded old garments discarded and left behind by departed schoolmates? Would she grow to look just like Abbie—bent and hopeless—with a retreating chin and scant, hay-colored hair and a whining voice?
She asked these harrowing questions and many others of her sympathizing friends.