The cold stare from the girl's eyes stopped her, but she added fretfully, "You are always doing things to annoy me. I can't think why, I'm sure."
"She was trying to dry it," declared Jane, belligerently. "She didn't mean to hurt the old photo. Did you, darling?"
"I can hardly see what my motive could have been," said Esther politely, rising from the table. She had deliberately tried to destroy the photograph and was exultantly glad that she had succeeded, yet, so quickly does the actress instinct develop under the spur of necessity, that her face and manner showed only amused tolerance of such a foolish suspicion.
Later, the culprit smiled understandingly at her image in the mirror as she dressed for church. "I did not know I could be so catty," she told her reflection, "but I don't care. She hadn't any right to have that darling picture. Ugly, indeed!" The blue eyes snapped and then became reflective. "Only she didn't think it ugly any more than I did. It was just talk. She was certainly furious when the film rubbed off. I wonder—" She fastened the last dark tress of hair, still wondering.
All the way to church she wondered, walking demurely with Jane up Oliver's Hill, while Mary, nervously gay, fluttered on a step or two ahead. Jane found her unresponsive that morning. The acquaintances they passed found her distant. They wondered if Esther Coombe were becoming "stuck up" since she had a school of her own? For although, as Miss Agnes Smith said, it is not quite the thing to do more than nod and smile on the way to church, one doesn't need to pass one's friends looking like an absent-minded funeral.
Poor Esther! She saw nobody because she looked for only one.
"Oh, Esther, Mrs. Sykes has a new bonnet. There she is, Esther, look!"
"Very pretty," murmured Esther absently.
Jane dropped her hand. "You're blind as well as deaf, Esther. It's perfectly, dreadfully awful, and you know it!"
Thus abjured, Esther managed to look at Mrs. Sykes' bonnet. And, having looked, she laughed. Mrs. Sykes had certainly surpassed herself in bonnets. And poor Ann, her skirts were stiffer, her pig-tails tighter and her small face more mutinous than ever. The doctor was not of the party. Esther had known that, long before Jane had noticed the bonnet.