"With pleasure. It's altogether too heavy for comfort. Are there no street cars or busses we can take? I like to walk, but not when I have luggage to carry."
"We can take a car or an automobile bus if you like," said Grace courteously, although she experienced a vague sense of annoyance at this newcomer's calmly expressed preference.
"Oh, let's take the automobile, if it isn't too expensive!" exclaimed Evelyn eagerly. "I love to ride in an automobile. Are there any girls at Overton who own cars? If there are I shall certainly cultivate them. I suppose they won't notice me, though, because I am a freshman and a poor one at that," she ended with a pout, her fair face taking on almost sullen lines.
Grace shook her head.
"Being poor doesn't count at Overton," she said, "I know a girl who lived in a bare, cheerless room in an old house in the suburbs of Overton and earned her way by doing mending for the students. She worked in a dressmaker's shop during her summer vacations too, and yet she was the chum of the richest girl in college."
"Why didn't the rich girl help her if she thought so much of her?" inquired Evelyn rather sarcastically.
"Because the girl wouldn't allow her to do so. She was too independent to accept help. She did not wish to become obligated to any one, not even her dearest friend."
"Foolish girl," was Evelyn's contemptuous comment. "If one can't ask occasional favors of one's friends one might as well have none. I am very sure that I would take the goods the gods provide without murmuring. These extreme standards of ethics and honor are all very pretty in books, but not at all practical in every-day life."
Grace made no reply. She was lost, for the instant, in a maze of disagreeable reflection. She was afraid she now understood only too well why Ida instead of Evelyn Ward had come to see her. In the Ward family the hard tasks had apparently been thrust upon the patient elder sister, while the younger reaped where she had not sown, without a conscientious qualm. And it was for this beautiful, selfish girl that she and Emma had curtailed their comfort. She almost wished she had been firm in her first refusal to consider taking another girl into Harlowe House. Then a vision of Ida Ward's thin face, lighted by two pleading eyes, rose before her. With an inward rebuke for her own grudging attitude, Grace squared her shoulders and resolved to look for only the best in this latest arrival.
It took but a moment to hail an automobile bus which had just run into the station yard, and they were soon on their way to Harlowe House. Grace pointed out to Evelyn the various interesting features of Overton. They impressed the latter but little.