‘I’ve just been telling the boys all about it,’ she remarked.
Barbara stared. It put the finishing touch to her distrust of Jill, that she should have told anything to the boys–her boys–before she had time to tell them herself.
‘I–I think it’s a shame!’ she exclaimed hotly, and she bit her lip to keep from crying.
‘Hullo, Babe! What’s up?’ asked Peter, in surprise.
Jill slipped out of the arm-chair, and laid her hand on the child’s shoulder. ‘I’m so sorry, Babs,’ she began softly; ‘I really didn’t know––’
Barbara looked up at her doubtfully. The tone was kind, but then, why did she go on smiling in that irritating way? ‘You don’t understand,’ she said, and twisted herself free from Jill’s grasp, and did not speak again until she was gone.
The boys took no notice of her; they always left the Babe alone when she was in one of her odd moods. But Jill, who had really meant to be kind, went away feeling puzzled. She had got over her first shyness of the boys in a very few minutes, for they were evidently trying to be friendly in their blunt, boyish fashion; but Barbara baffled her. There was something antagonistic in the child’s manner; and Jill, who had always been accustomed to meeting with affection wherever she went, did not quite know what to make of her. Of course it was ridiculous to worry herself about a tomboy of eleven who chose to be sulky; but it was the first time any one had refused to make friends with her, and Jill was a little hurt about it.
‘You’re spoiled, my dear,’ remarked her mother, as they drove away from the Berkeleys’ house; ‘and it is I who have spoiled you. I’m a silly old woman, but I never could bear to deny you all the sympathy you asked. I was afraid, you see, that you might think the world was not a nice place to be in.’
‘I’m glad you spoiled me, and I think the world is a nice place to be in,’ answered Jill, laughing. ‘But what has that to do with Barbara’s not liking me?’
‘Well, you can’t expect every one to like you,’ said the old lady, in her brusque way. ‘Babs will like you well enough when she finds that she is still the Babe of the family, in spite of your being there.’