Then she moved toward the cot, but she moved toward the outside and not near that of her roommate. Hester was overcome with homesickness. Her pride took to itself, wings. Raising herself in bed, she turned toward Helen.
"Have you forgotten something, Helen? Are you not going to bid me good-night?"
"Surely. Good-night, Hester."
"But not that way, Helen. I mean the way you always have done."
There was silence for an instant. To Hester it seemed as though hours had passed before Helen replied gently and firmly, "Not to-night, Hester. I—I—cannot—to-night."
CHAPTER XI
After this, Hester Alden believed that school could never be as it had been. The first day proved that she was wrong. Outwardly, life at Dickinson moved on as before. No one appeared to know or care that Hester Alden had been touched to the quick, and that she was very miserable and unhappy.
Helen was courtesy itself. She was careful to include Hester in all her invitations, but it was a carefulness forced upon her from a sense of duty and not from love. Hester was not dull. She felt the difference. She could be quite as proud as Helen. So she raised her head a trifle higher as she walked and drew her shoulders a little more rigid and gave back to Helen the same rigid courtesy that she was receiving.