Certainly the visit had not done much good, except in making the girls appreciate the refinement of their surroundings at the Goyle.
And when letters arrived from Hubert at the American Vale Leston, asking questions requiring some research in books, either Magdalen’s or at the Rock Quay library, Vera dawdled and sighed over them; and when the more zealous Magdalen or Paula took all the trouble, and left nothing for her to do but to copy their notes, and write the letters, she grew cross. “It was for Hubert, and she did not want any one else to meddle! So stupid! If he had only taken Pratt and Pavis’s offer, there would not have been all this bother!”
That, of course, she only ventured to utter before Paula and Thekla, and it made them both so furious that she declared she was only in joke, and did not mean it.
She was indulging in reflections on the general dulness of her lot, and the lack of sympathy in her sisters, as she lingered by the confectioner’s window, with her eyes fixed on a gorgeous combination of coloured bonbons, when Wilfred Merrifield sauntered out. “Fresh from Paris!” he said. “Going to choose some?”
“Oh no, I haven’t got any cash. M. A. keeps us horribly short.”
“As usual with governors! But look here! Pocket this. Sweets to the sweet, from an old chum!”
“Oh, Will, how jolly! Such a love of a box.”
“Make haste! Some of the girls are lurking about, and if there is any mischief to be made, trust Gill for doing it.”
“Mischief!—” but before the words were out of her mouth, Gillian and Mysie appeared from the next shop, a bootmaker’s, and Mysie stood aghast with, “What are you doing? Buying goodies! How very ridiculous!”
“The proper thing between chums, isn’t it, Vera?” said Wilfred, with an indifferent air. “We aren’t unlucky Sunday scholars, Mysie, to be jumped upon! Good-bye, Vera, au revoir!”