“It’s perfectly maddening,” she exclaimed to herself, giving the turf on the campus a savage little kick. “Nancy and Elinor actually avoid meeting my eyes as if I were some one unfit to know. I wish I had consented to go to boarding school, after all, instead of coming to Cousin Helen. I don’t want to belong to a silly society that does nothing but have afternoon teas. I want to play basket ball and go on long tramps with other girls and have picnics. I’m so disappointed, I could weep aloud.”
This was the picture Billie had drawn in her mind of life at West Haven High School and here she was an outcast from all the good times and open air games of the class, simply because not one of her old friends would come near her. She long remembered that first day at school as the loneliest and most wretched of her whole life.
Then the last gong sounded and everybody went home except Billie, who had an appointment with Miss Gray, the principal. After the interview, in a rebellious and disconsolate humor, homesick for her father and disappointed with the whole world, she cranked up her red car and whirled away toward the open country.
As she sped along the road she passed the three friends of that summer of years ago, walking briskly away from town. They did not even look up as she whirled by and the lump in her throat grew so big that it resolved itself into a sob and two hot tears trickled down her cheeks.
“Perhaps they’re going over to the woods; just what I would have loved to have done,” wept the disappointed young girl, whose life had been a lonely one in spite of her father’s devotion and constant companionship.
She was still drying her eyes when she noticed some distance ahead a man leap into the road and wave his arms violently. Billie slowed down and came to a stop; for at the side of the road another very ill-looking man was lying prone on his back with closed eyes and slightly parted lips.
“What is it?” she asked. “Has your friend been hurt?”
“No, miss,” answered the man who had stopped her, “but he has walked fifteen miles to-day and I am afraid he’s about all in. I am trying to get him to his house, but I can’t carry him and he can’t take another step.”
“Where is his house?” asked Billie.