"What on earth's the matter?" asked her neighbour crossly; it was the black-haired boarder who had winked at Laura the first evening at tea; her name was Bertha Ramsey. "I can't draw a stroke if you shake like that."
"I've lost my pencil."
The girl considered Laura for a moment, then pushed the lid from a box of long, beautifully sharpened drawing-pencils. "Here, you can have one of these."
Laura eyed the well-filled box admiringly, and modestly selected the shortest pencil. Bertha Ramsay, having finished her map, leaned back in her seat.
"And next time you feel inclined to boo-hoo at the tea-table, hold on to your eyebrows and sing Rule Britannia.—DID it want its mummy, poor ickle sing?"
Here Bertha's chum, a girl called Inez, chimed in from the other side.
"It's all very well for you," she said to Bertha, in a deep, slow voice. "You're a weekly boarder."
Laura had the wish to be very pleasant, in return for the pencil. So she drew a sigh, and said, with over-emphasis: "How nice for your mother to have you home every week!"
Bertha only laughed at this, in a teasing way: "Yes, isn't it?" But Inez leaned across behind her and gave Laura a poke.
"Shut up!" she telegraphed.