"What's the matter?" asked Agony, appearing beside her.
Katherine told her.
Agony's eyes flashed. "I'm going to find Jane Pratt," she said in the calm tone which always indicated smouldering anger, "and make her share her blankets with Carmen."
Jane, who, with the practised eye of the old camper, had selected a smooth bit of ground thickly covered with pine needles and sloping gently upward toward the end for her head, and had arranged her two double blankets and her extra large sized poncho into an extremely comfortable bed for one, looked up from her labors to find Agony standing before her with flushed face and blazing eyes.
"Jane Pratt," Agony began without preliminary, "did you promise to sleep with Carmen Chadwick, and lead her to think she did not need to bring any blankets along on this trip?"
Jane returned Agony's gaze coolly, and gave a slight, disagreeable laugh. "Carmen's the biggest goose in camp," she said scornfully. "Anybody'd know I didn't mean—"
"Carmen didn't know you didn't mean it," Agony interrupted. "She thought you were sincere, and believed you, and now she's dreadfully hurt about it. You ought to be ashamed of yourself, hurting a poor little girl's feelings like that."
"If anybody's green enough to come on an overnight trip without any blankets and actually think someone else is going to bring them for her—"
"Well, as it happens, Carmen was green enough, and that's just the point. She's never been away from home and because she's so desperately homesick she's having a hard time making friends. If one person treats her like this it'll be hard for her ever to believe what people tell her and it'll be harder for her to get acquainted than ever."
Jane shrugged her shoulders. "What she believes or doesn't believe doesn't concern me."