"I'm sure I wonder Mrs. Gurley hasn't noticed how badly she's working just now," said Miss Chapman; and her face wore it best-meaning, but most uncertain smile.
"Oh, you know very well if Mrs. Gurley doesn't want to see a thing she doesn't," retorted Miss Snodgrass. "A regular talent for going blind, I call it—especially where Evelyn Souttar's concerned."
"Oh, I don't think you should talk like that," urged Miss Chapman nervously.
"I say what I think," asserted Miss Snodgrass. "And if I had my way, I'd give Laura Rambotham something she wouldn't forget. That child'll come to a bad end yet.—How do you like that colour, Miss C.?" She had a nest of cloth-patterns in her lap, and held one up as she spoke.
"Oh, you shouldn't say such things," remonstrated Miss Chapman. "There's many a true word said in jest." She settled her glasses on her nose. "It's very nice, but I think I like a bottle-green better."
"Of course, I don't mean she'll end on the gallows, if that's what troubles you. But she's frightfully unbalanced, and, to my mind, ought to have some sense knocked into her before it's too late.—That's a better shade, isn't it?"
"Poor little Laura," said Miss Chapman, and drew a sigh. "Yes, I like that. Where did you say you were going to have the dress made?"
Miss Snodgrass named, not without pride, one of the first warehouses in the city. "I've been saving up my screw for it, and I mean to have something decent this time. Besides, I know one of the men in the shop, and I'm going to make them do it cheap." And here they fell to discussing price and cut.
Thus the onlookers laughed and quizzed and wondered; no one was bold enough to put an open question to Evelyn, and Evelyn did not offer to take anyone into her confidence. She held even hints and allusions at bay, with her honeyed laugh; which was HER shield against the world. Laura was the only person who ever got behind this laugh, and what she discovered there, she did not tell. As it was, varying motives were suggested for Evelyn's long-suffering, nobody being ready to believe that it could really be fondness, on her part, for the Byronic atom of humanity she had attracted to her.
However that might be, the two girls, the big fair one and the little dark one, were, outside class-hours, seldom apart. Evelyn did not often, as in the case of the birdlike Lolo, give her young tyrant cause for offence; if she sometimes sought another's company, it was done in a roguish spirit—from a feminine desire to tease. Perhaps, too, she was at heart not averse to Laura's tantrums, or to testing her own power in quelling them. On the whole, though, she was very careful of her little friend's sensitive spots. She did not repeat the experiment of taking Laura out with her; as her stay at school drew to a close she went out less frequently herself; for the reason that, no matter how late it was on her getting back, she would find Laura obstinately sitting up in bed, wide-awake. And it went against the grain in her to keep the pale-faced girl from sleep.