Nothing was ever allowed to come in the way of their spending their Saturday afternoons together, and if, as time went on, less was heard about Jack from Hildegarde, it was only because so very much more was heard about Cheviot from Bella.
It was a difficult moment when two girls with such lofty ideas of friendship met for the first time after Cheviot had said to Hildegarde at a dance: “When are you going to begin to care for me?” She had been so taken by surprise that she had only smiled and said: “I don’t know,” but she thought hardly less of Bella at the moment than she thought of Jack. So the next time that Bella remarked by the way: “Isn’t he perfectly fascinating?” Hildegarde had hesitated, and she—yes—she was actually getting red. Bella stared, “Why, are you coming to—to—”
“No; oh, no! Only—”
“Only what?”
“It’s dreadfully hard, but I haven’t forgotten our compact. So I suppose I’ve got to tell you what—what he said to me last night.”
Bella received the information with a half-hysterical pretense of carrying it off gaily. “Well, what’s there new in that? As if every soul in Valdivia hasn’t known for perfect ages that he cares about you frightfully. I don’t mind you. Because you’re Hildegarde, and any man who didn’t love you must—well, there must be something pretty wrong about him. I shall give him a whole year—maybe even two, to go on like that, and then when I’m sixteen, or seventeen at the latest, I won’t have it any longer.”
Hildegarde, enormously relieved, laughed and kissed her. “Oh, you nice, funny child!”
“Only promise me again, cross your heart and hope you may die, if you ever keep anything from me about Louis Cheviot.”
Hildegarde complied and life went on as before—only that Hildegarde showed herself less ready to fall in with Bella’s ecstasies. An instinct to forestall a possible jealousy made her cavil from time to time. “Don’t you think his shoulders are too broad for his height?”
“No, I don’t, and look how splendidly he carries them. You have to see him beside a huge man, like Mr. Mar, before you realize—”