‘Oh, if that’s all,’ said Barbara, indifferently, ‘I don’t want to take off anybody’s boots, thank you.’
‘You’ll have to, whether you like it or not,’ interposed Jean, who had been listening quite complacently to Angela’s description of her feelings. ‘Come along now, and see Margaret Hulme; and don’t be such a month about it, or else we shall catch it for stopping in here so long.’
‘Who is Margaret Hulme, and why have I got to go and see her?’ asked Babs, hanging back a little. It was so perplexing to have to do things without being given any reason for it.
Both the girls opened their eyes wide. ‘Why, she is the head girl!’ they explained, as if that were reason enough for anything; and without waiting for any more objections, they pulled her across the room to where the fair girl still made the centre of the group round the fire. She kept them waiting for some seconds before she condescended to notice that they were there.
‘Didn’t I tell you to go back to your own playroom?’ she demanded presently. Then her eyes fell on Barbara, and she scanned her critically up and down.
‘This is Jill Urquhart’s cousin,’ explained Jean, hurriedly, and she gave Barbara an unexpected push that sent her stumbling, with her usual lack of good fortune, right against the head girl.
‘Take care, child!’ said Margaret, frowning. And while Babs stammered out some apology, she turned to the other girls behind her and said something that made them all laugh.
‘She’s only eleven, though she’s so awfully tall; and her name is Barbara Berkeley,’ volunteered Angela, peering over the shoulder of the new girl.
‘Who spoke to you?’ inquired the head girl, sarcastically, looking back again. She once more scanned Barbara all over, and smiled in an annoying manner to herself. ‘However did Jill manage to have a cousin like you?’ she asked; and the other girls laughed more than before.
‘I don’t know,’ said Barbara, with a touch of scorn in her voice. The mysterious way in which the head girl and her admirers were laughing at her was very different from the frank teasing she was accustomed to; and it gave her a sudden wish to assert herself. ‘I never pretended to be like Jill, or like any of you! I–I don’t think I want to be like you, either. In my home, we don’t laugh behind people’s backs.’