“And do you want to know what I think?”
Another nod.
“Well, I’m afraid you’ve all been very unkind to Shirley. Have you called her tattle-tale, and shut her out of all the fun, and maybe made her cry?”
This time the nod was very emphatic.
“We call her Tattle-tale Shirley. How did you ever guess that, Betty? And we don’t associate with her at all. And she cries into her pillow at night, because she hears us whispering secrets and we leave her out. But, Betty, she ought to have to feel bad. It’s just mean to tell on another girl. Poor Frisky has to walk up and down the tennis-courts alone for her exercise hour, with Kitty Carson watching out of her window to see that she does it. But she says she wouldn’t mind that. What she minds is thinking anybody could be so hateful that she’d go and tell.”
“But did Shirley mean to tell, or did she just get frightened and confused and speak before she thought?”
“Well,” the Smallest Sister admitted reluctantly, “I s’pose maybe she got rather frightened. Kitty Carson looks at you so hard through her big specs that you generally do. But she had ought to have thought.” Dorothy was earnest if not grammatical. “Frisky says she’d sooner be expelled from school herself than get another girl into disgrace.”
“Frisky, as you call her, is older. Shirley is little and timid, and I’m sure she didn’t realize that she was saying anything wrong. Did she now, Dorothy? Tell me ‘honest and true,’ what you think. Did she dislike Frisky, and want to get her into trouble?”
“No-o, I s’pose not. She used to say she worshipped her just as much as I did.”
“Then do you think it’s quite fair to treat her as you have?”