This whispered remark had just been concluded when there came an imperative rapping on the inner door. Pat skipped to open it. Gwynette, dressed for the street, entered. “What’s the grand idea of locking the door between our rooms?” she inquired.
“Didn’t know it was locked,” Pat replied honestly. Beulah was again solving the intricate problem, or attempting to, and acted as though she had not heard.
Patricia, always the more tender-hearted, offered their visitor a chair. Then solicitously: “What is the matter, Gwyn. You look as though you had cried for hours. Bad news in the note Jenny Warner brought you?”
There was a hard expression in the brown eyes that were turned coldly toward the sympathetic inquirer. Slowly she said, “I sometimes think that I hate my mother and that she hates me.”
There was a quick protest from Pat. “Don’t say that, Gwyn, just because you are angry! You have told me, yourself, that your mother has granted your every wish until recently.”
Gwynette shrugged her proudly-held shoulders. “Even so! Why am I now treated like a child and told what I must do, or be punished?” Noting a surprised expression in Patricia’s pleasant face, Gwyn repeated with emphasis: “Just exactly that! If I do not take the tests, or if I fail in them when they are taken, I cannot have my coming-out party next year, but must remain in this or some other school until I obtain a diploma as a graduate with honors. So Ma Mere informed me in the note brought by that despicable Jenny Warner.”
Beulah could not help hearing and she looked up, her eyes flashing. “Gwynette, if you wish to slander a friend of Pat’s and mine, you will have to choose another audience.”
The eyebrows of the visitor were lifted. “Indeed? Since when have you become the champion of the granddaughter of my mother’s servants?”
Beulah’s answer was defiant. “Pat and I both consider Jenny Warner one of the most beautiful and lovable girls we have ever met. We went for a ride with her on Saturday, and this afternoon, if we aren’t too exhausted after the tests, we are going to walk down to her farm home and call on her and upon little Lenora Gale, who has been moved there from the infirmary.”
Gwynette rose, flinging over her shoulder contemptuously, “Well, I see that you have made your choice of friends. Of course you cannot expect to associate with me, if you are hobnobbing at the same time with our servants. What is more, that Lenora Gale’s father is a wheat rancher in Dakota. I, at least, shall select my friends from exclusive families. I will bid you good-bye. From now on our intimacy is at end.” The door closed behind Gwyn with an emphatic bang. Beulah leaped up and danced a jig. Pat caught her and pushed her back into her chair. “Don’t. She’ll hear and her feelings will be hurt.”