“I am only eleven,” said Betty, who, however, was nearly as tall as Elsa.
“And I am only ten and a half,” said Alice, running a little ahead, her blue eyes very wide open with interest. “But it truly doesn’t matter how old we are; we all play together and we like the same things.” Alice was a quaint little figure. She looked like a rather shabbily dressed doll, with her blue eyes and pink cheeks, her thick blue coat which came just to her knees, and a shaggy blue tam-o’-shanter, below which hung very smooth hair cut short around her neck.
“If we have a club, where will it meet?” asked Elsa.
“It can come to my house,” said Betty, beginning to be interested, and dancing on ahead, backward now.
“It can meet at my house, too, though I live rather far away,” said Alice.
Elsa walked on slowly, behind the others. She alone did not offer to have the club meet at her home.
They were directly in front of Betty’s home, a large and pleasant-looking house on this main avenue of the suburban town of Berkeley. “Come into my house and we will start the club now,” urged Betty, running up the front steps. But she stopped as Elsa said: “I must go and ask grandmother if I can belong.”
“O, of course she will let you,” exclaimed Betty. But Elsa, with flying yellow hair, was already half-way home. So Betty and Alice waited on the top step.
In a very short time Elsa came running back and announced breathlessly: “Yes—I can belong—and I can stay till five o’clock.” Her usually pale face was rosy from the haste, and her wide-brimmed hat had slipped down over her loose, fair hair.
It would be hard to find three girls more unlike than these three good friends who went hurrying into the house together. Elsa, the oldest, had a sensitive face and deep violet-gray eyes, which, with her soft, silky hair, gave her a delicate, almost flower-like look. Betty, next in age, was a lively, wide-awake girl with merry brown eyes and bright cheeks; she was always a leader, and sometimes a wilful one, in any fun or adventure. Alice—“Baby Alice,” as Betty often teasingly called her—had softly rounded cheeks, big blue eyes, and a fair, high forehead. Alice was a dreamy, rather quiet child, but everybody loved her for her unselfish, affectionate ways.