Lois and Kathleen noticed the change in their young sister and puzzled over it, but their mother put it down to Monica being laid up.
"See how anxious she is to go over to see her friend as often as possible," said Mrs. Franklyn; "it is evident that they are very fond of one another, and she misses her companionship. It will be all right when Monica gets back to school; Olive will be her usual happy, contented self again then."
And as they had no inkling of the land of unrealities in which the girl was living, her sisters accepted the mother's verdict, and good-naturedly made it possible for Olive to go over to Carson Rise quite frequently, little dreaming that, each time she went, fresh fuel was added to the flame.
Monica, who, at first, had smiled with satisfaction when she found her prediction come true, began to be a little alarmed as time went on and Olive kept continually asking for a fresh book. She was rather a slow reader herself, but Olive seemed literally to devour them.
"How do you manage to find time to read such a lot?" she said incredulously one Monday afternoon, when they were sitting in a rustic summer-house, in a shady corner of the sheltered garden, and Olive had admitted that she had already finished a three-volume novel that she had taken home only the Saturday before. "I can't think how you do it!"
"I can't leave off," said Olive. "As it happens, Elsa is grinding hard for her music exam., so she spends hours in the drawing-room practising, and that leaves me the 'den' pretty much to myself. But if she weren't, I should just have to make opportunities somehow, for I am perfectly wretched when I can't have a read."
"But I thought your people objected to novel-reading. Do none of them ever catch you at it? and how do you manage to do your home-work?" said Monica, still incredulous.
"No, they haven't yet; but I live in dread of discovery every day," confessed her friend. "As to lessons, I manage to scrape along somehow."
"Well, I'm almost sorry I ever lent you a book," said Monica, who could detect a subtle difference in Olive, and felt uneasy.
"Oh, Monica, how often and often I've wished that I'd never borrowed that first one!" said the poor infatuated girl; "and, sometimes, I think I'll never touch a novel again. But I always have to; I can't seem to live without reading them now. There's a hungry feeling in my brain. I can't explain what I mean, but it feels quite empty, somehow, until I have a good read, and then I feel better. Don't you ever get sensations like that?" and the poor child looked pitifully at her companion.