A few minutes later when the older girl turned from the greetings and messages in pantomime with her friends below, she saw Ellen’s rough head bending over a paper. It was a needlessly untidy head. During the weeks of close confinement and enforced companionship, she had felt her dislike steadily growing. The girl was on her nerves. She was wholly disagreeable. Everything about her was displeasing, her careless enunciation, queer little face, coarse clothes, impulsive, crude ways, even occasional mistakes in grammar. She told herself that the child had no breeding, no manners, no sense of the fitness of things. There was no reason why she should admit her into the circle of her intimates merely because the two had been thrown together by the exigencies of an attack of scarlet fever. Such a fortuitous relation would be severed in the shortest possible time, completely and irremediably severed. Trust Lila Allan, president of the junior literary society, to manage that. Meanwhile she intended to leave the girl severely alone. Think of the impudence of calling her Lila! Lila, indeed! And that hint about reading aloud! The incredible impertinence of it! And to appropriate her pencil! Atrocious!
But of course she would keep on being polite. She owed that to herself, to her position, to her self-respect. Accordingly Miss Allan busied herself graciously about other matters till Ellen had finished her note, addressed an envelope, and advanced with it to the window.
She hesitated doubtfully, with one hand on the sash.
“It won’t matter just this once,” she said as if arguing, “somebody will pick it up and mail it for me. It concerns something important and private. People are silly about infection. I’m quite sure it won’t matter just this once.” She paused this time with rather an anxious little side glance toward Lila.
That young lady said nothing. She was engaged in contemplating with a studiously inexpressive countenance the stub of her precious and only pencil. It needed sharpening again.
Ellen raised the window half an inch. “The doctor here is so foolish,” she commented with an injured air, “she’s always bothering about infection or contagion or whatever you call it. It isn’t necessary either. I know a doctor at home and he told a woman to wrap up her little girl and bring her down to his office, and the little girl was peeling too. He knew it wouldn’t do any harm even if she did go in the street car. He was sensible.”
Lila smothered a sigh of long suffering as she reached for the case knife again.
“And I am so tired,” insisted Ellen with fretful vehemence. “I am bored to death, and nobody amuses me, and my eyes ache when I try to read, and my wrist won’t peel, and all the other girls are enjoying themselves, and my letter is awfully important and private, and mother will be so glad to receive it, and my little sister will snatch it quick from the postcarrier, and they’ll all be glad, and there isn’t the least bit of danger, and I’m going to do it.” She flung the sash wide and glanced around for an instant with a face in which reckless defiance wrestled with a frightened wish to be dissuaded. “I’m going to do it,” she repeated, “I’m going to do it—Lila!”
Miss Allan raised her head with a politely controlled shiver. “Would you mind closing the window at your earliest convenience, Miss Bright?”
The younger girl gave her one look, then turned and leaning out over the sill sent the envelope fluttering downward till it rested square and white on the concrete walk far below. Lila shrugged her shoulder and finished sharpening her pencil.