“How could the professor send you here?” asked Dolly.
“He did not exactly send me, but he helped me,” replied the luckless Euphemia, becoming a trifle more coherent. “I saw you at the little church, though you did not see me, because, of course, we sit in the most disagreeable part, just where we can't see or be seen at all. And though I only saw you at a distance, and through your veil, and half behind a pillar, I knew you, and knew Miss MacDowlas. I think I knew Miss MacDowlas most because she wasn't behind the pillar. And it nearly drove me crazy to think you were so near, and I gave one of the servants some money to find out where you were staying, and she brought me word that you were staying here, and meant to stay. And then I asked the lady principal to let me come and see you, and of course she refused; and I never should have been able to come at all, only it chanced that was my music-lesson day, and I went in to the professor with red eyes,—I had cried so,—and when he asked me what I had been crying for, I remembered that he used to be fond of you, and I told him. And he was sorry for me, and promised to ask leave for me. He is a cousin of the lady principal, and a great favorite with her. And the end of it was that they let me come. And I have almost flown. I had to wait until to-day, you know, because it was Saturday.”
It was quite touching to see how, when she stopped speaking, she clung to Dolly's hands, and looked at her with wonder and grief in her face.
“What is it that has changed you so?” she said. “You are not like yourself at all. Oh, my dear, how ill you are!”
A wistful shadow showed itself in the girl's eyes.
“Am I so much changed?” she asked.
“You do not look like our Dolly at all,” protested Phemie. “You are thin,—oh, so thin! What is the matter?”
“Thin!” said Dolly. “Am I? Then I must be growing ugly enough. Perhaps it is to punish me for being so vain about my figure. Don't you remember what a dread I always had of growing thin? Just to think that I should grow thin, after all! Do my bones stick out like the Honorable Cecilia Howland's, Phemie?” And she ended with a little laugh.
Phemie kissed her, in affectionate protest against such an idea.
“Oh, dear, no!” she said. “They could n't, you know. They are not the kind of bones to do it. Just think of her dreadful elbows and her fearful shoulder-blades! You couldn't look like her. I don't mean that sort of thinness at all. But you seem so light and so little. And look here,” and she held up the painfully small hand, the poor little hand without the ring. “There are no dimples here now, Dolly,” she said, sorrowfully.