Anyway, she stopped crying, and wiped her eyes, and asked me to go to Doney’s with her for tea. But I said I wouldn’t do that.
“Why not?” she asked in her old, cool, lofty manner and she raised her brows in a way that confessed she was surprised over my daring to refuse her invitation.
“Because,” I answered, “you took Viola, and now you’re mad at her, and you’re telling every one how often you took her out, and how much you did for her.”
She grew red. I think she didn’t like it, but I had to say it.
“I’ll take a walk,” I said. She didn’t answer that, but, head high, collected her music and flounced off. After I had practised about an hour I heard a noise at the doorway, and I looked up to see Leslie standing in it.
“You were quite right,” she stated, in the stiffest voice I had ever heard, and she looked right over my head. “I know it. I will be glad to walk with you if you like—”
“All right,” I answered, after a look at the little wrist watch father had given to me, before I left, “I’ll be ready in fifteen minutes; fourteen and a half more here, and a half to get into my things—”
And I think that day started our real friendship.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
PLANS FOR A PARTY
By Christmas time I was so well acquainted with both Leslie and Viola, that when, a week before Christmas, Viola called me in her room and told me what she was writing, I told her that I thought she was foolish.