The Getting of Wisdom

by Henry Handel Richardson

The elder girl had had this room to herself for over a year now, and Laura felt sure would be chafing inwardly at her intrusion. For days she stole mousily in and out, avoiding the hours when Evelyn was there, getting up earlier in the morning, hurrying into bed at night and feeling very sore indeed at the sufferance on which she supposed herself to be.

But once Evelyn caught her and said: "Don't, for gracious' sake, knock each time you want to come in, child. This is your room now as well as mine."

Laura reddened, and blurted out something about knowing how she must hate to have HER stuck in there.

Evelyn wrinkled up her forehead and laughed. "What rot! Do you think I'd have asked to have you, if I hated it so much?"

"You asked to have me?" gasped Laura.

"Of course—didn't you know? Old Gurley said I'd need to have some one; so I chose you."

Laura was too dumbfounded, and too diffident, to ask the grounds of such a choice. But the knowledge that it was so, worked an instant change in her.

In all the three years she had been at school, she had not got beyond a surface friendliness with any of her fellows. Even those who had been her "chums" had wandered like shades through the groves of her affection: rough, teasing Bertha; pretty, lazy Inez; perky Tilly, slangily frank Maria and Kate, Mary and her moral influence, clever, instructive Cupid: to none of them had she been drawn by any deeper sense of affinity. And though she had come to believe, in the course of the last, more peaceful year, that she had grown used to being what you would call an unpopular girl—one, that is, with whom no one ever shared a confidence—yet seldom was there a child who longed more ardently to be liked, or suffered more acutely under dislike. Apart however from the brusque manner she had contracted, in her search after truth, it must be admitted that Laura had but a small talent for friendship; she did not grasp the constant give-and-take intimacy implies; the liking of others had to be brought to her, unsought, she, on the other hand, being free to stand back and consider whether or no the feeling was worth returning. And friends are not made in this fashion.

But Evelyn had stoutly, and without waiting for permission, crossed the barrier; and each new incident in her approach was pleasanter than the last. Laura was pleased, and flattered, and round the place where her heart was, she felt a warm and comfortable glow.

She began to return the liking, with interest, after the manner of a lonely, bottled-up child. And everything about Evelyn made it easy to grow fond of her. To begin with, Laura loved pretty things and pretty people; and her new friend was out and away the prettiest girl in the school. Then, too, she was clever, and that counted; you did not make a friend of a fool. But her chief characteristics were a certain sound common sense, and an inexhaustible fund of good-nature—a careless, happy, laughing sunniness, that was as grateful to those who came into touch with it as a rare ointment is grateful to the skin. This kindliness arose, it might be, in the first place from indolence: it was less trouble to be merry and amiable than to put oneself out to be selfish, which also meant standing a fire of disagreeable words and looks; and then, too, it was really hard for one who had never had a whim crossed to be out of humour. But, whatever its origin, the good-nature was there, everlastingly; and Laura soon learnt that she could cuddle in under it, and be screened by it, as a lamb is screened by its mother's woolly coat.