Belle flushed and put her hand in the deep pocket of her dark blue school dress. She drew out a small, neatly wrapped bundle. This she placed on the table. “I can’t accept them,” she declared. “I thought at first that they were meant merely as a gift of friendship, but, when I got to thinking it over, I knew they were meant to pay me for having been untrue to myself.”
“Hi-ho! Hear the young preacher! Any wings started?” Anne’s taunt was interrupted by a now thoroughly angry Kathryn. “Belle Wiley,” she said, “for the past month you’ve been hanging around my room, morning, noon and night, telling me how much you admired me and hoping that some day there’d be something you could do to show me how much you liked me, and now, the very first thing I ask you to do, you act up in this way.”
“But it wasn’t right. It wasn’t honest; the thing you asked me to do.”
“Indeed? I merely asked you to write so poor a story that Miss Torrence would find it unfit to use in the first copy of The Manuscript Magazine. You did it. Nobody could have written a poorer one.”
Anne stopped munching chocolates. Leaning forward, she said: “And, of course, since we had done that simple little thing for Kathy, she wanted to show her appreciation in some nice way and she gave us each a pair of silk stockings. I call that a mighty fine friend to have, myself.”
Belle rose as though she were about to go. “I’m sorry, Kathryn,” and there was a little break in her voice. “I hate to be a piker and I know you both believe that I am, but until today, I didn’t see things in the right light. I did love you, Kathryn, and when you care for anybody, don’t you understand, it’s awfully hard for you to believe that—,” she hesitated miserably, but bravely kept on, “that your ideal is not on the square. When I came in here and found you copying the story you submitted for the contest, I just couldn’t believe my eyes. You said at first it was a story you had written long ago, but afterwards you confided to us that you were on easy street, for a cousin of yours in Boston who was a crack at composition, sent one every week for you to read and—”
Kathryn pretended to yawn. “Please bring the sermon to an end. I’m glad to have found out in time just how unworthy a friend you are, Belle. Goodness, it scares me, when I realize how near I came to letting you in on the reason for which I called this meeting. Please close the door after you as you leave.” The words were calm, but there was a glint in the dark, half-closed eyes that was threatening. Belle knew that she had been dismissed. At the door she turned to repeat, “I’m sorry, Kathryn, but I can’t——”
“Just be careful what you say and do,” was the warning that followed the retreating girl. She heard the key turn in the lock, then she went to her room to sob out her disappointment in her friend.
“Well, this is what comes of taking one of the common people into your confidence.” Kathryn walked to the window when she had locked the door and looked out at a snow-covered campus. “I knew, of course, that Belle’s father was a tradesman, and, out of this seminary, I most certainly would not have associated with her.” Anne winced. Her own father’s profession was not one followed by aristocrats. He conducted a pool room in the Middle West. How she hoped Kathryn knew nothing of this.
“What is your father’s—er—occupation?” Anne feared business would sound too crude.