The elder girl looked down at her suspiciously. ‘Did she really say that?’ she inquired.
‘Go and ask her, that’s all,’ cried Angela, full of righteous indignation at having her word doubted. For she was really under the impression that she had correctly described the attitude of the new girl towards the doctor and Ruth Oliver.
‘Well, I will,’ answered Ruth, and she threaded her way among the girls until she too stood over the prostrate figure of the offender.
‘Babs,’ she called, bending down.
Barbara flourished her black legs in the air with an impatient movement. ‘How you do bother!’ she complained, stifling a sigh. ‘That’s the second in five minutes. Why can’t you leave me alone?’
There was a start of surprise in the group that surrounded her. It is probable that few of her listeners saw the ridiculous side of the new girl’s request to be left alone, when that was the punishment that had been meted out to her ever since her second day at school; but any one of them could have told her that that was not the way to speak to a girl in the First.
Ruth turned a little red from sheer nervousness; and the girls immediately decided that she was afraid of the youngest child in the school, and began to giggle with one accord. Barbara sighed again at this new interruption; and raising herself on her knees, she sat back on her heels.
‘Oh, it’s you!’ she observed, shaking the hair out of her eyes. ‘Why didn’t you say so? I thought it was just some one who wanted to bother.’
‘You’ve got to go and see the doctor in Finny’s study. Make haste, Babe,’ said Ruth, who was smarting under the giggle, and wanted to get back into the other room among her equals. But the Babe showed no signs of making haste.
‘Why have I got to see the doctor?’ she asked, opening her eyes. ‘I’m not ill or anything; and I want to finish my letter home. Don’t you think it’s a mistake?’