Suzanne was feeling some confidence about the affair, Ann could see. “You’d better not put on your kimono, Ann, for she may send for you. Do your best for me, cousin,” said artful Suzanne.
“I will,” said Ann, “though I don’t know what is ‘best.’ I fancy that Miss Tudor will do the settling of it, don’t you?”
“She can be influenced,” replied Suzanne.
Ann did not believe this, in the sense in which Suzanne meant it, and thought that Suzanne exaggerated her own importance and that of her family. “She thinks that the Huntington-LeRoys are the whole thing!” thought Ann. “And to get her own way and be with Eleanor, for the sake of I don’t know what, she’d do anything and turn anybody out!” Ann was thoroughly disgusted. She laid aside her “math,” decided that she could not think up a theme while her mind was so distracted, and picked up the new French text, rather technical and difficult, but she could more easily read along and look up the new words in her dictionary than do anything else. She went into her bedroom, looked in the glass to see if her hair were in condition to appear before the dean, and sat down by the window with her book. If Eleanor came in and did not want to speak to her about where she had been, it would be simpler for her to be out of the way. She shut the bedroom door, as this occurred to her.
But it was not long before Aline and Eleanor came in, talking, as Ann thought, in some excitement, though their voices were low. “Ann!” called Eleanor, rapping sharply upon the bedroom door.
“Come in,” called Ann in reply.
Both girls came in and sat down on the bed, looking at Ann and each other. “You tell her, Eleanor,” said Aline, clasping the head of the bed with one arm, crossing her small slippered feet and cupping her pointed, poetic chin with her free hand.
“Surely I will,” replied the efficient Eleanor, her eyes flashing. “Are you satisfied with this arrangement, Ann, or would you like to get out of it?” she asked directly.
“I should prefer to leave things as they are,” promptly replied Ann.
“From what I know of you,” said Eleanor, “I judge that you are telling the truth.”