“Well, sit down now you are in. You are a nice little thing, you know, Sib, although at present you are very unimportant. You know that, of course?”
“Yes,” said Sibyl; “I am told it nearly every hour of the day.” She spoke in a wistful tone. “Sometimes,” she added, “I could almost wish I were back in the lower school, where I was looked up to by the smaller girls and had a right good time.”
“We can never go back, Sib; that is the law of life.”
“Of course not.”
“Well, sit down and talk to me. Now, I have something to say to you. Do you know that I am devoured with curiosity, and all about a small girl like yourself?”
“Oh Fanny,” said Sibyl, immensely flattered, “I am glad you take an interest in me!”
“I must be frank,” said Fanny. “Up to the present I have taken no special interest in you, except in so far as you are Martha’s protégé; but when I saw you in that extraordinary dress last night I singled you out at once as a girl with original ideas. Do look me in the face, Sib!”
Sibyl turned. Fanny’s face was exquisitely chiselled. Each neat little feature was perfect. Her eyes were large and well-shaped, her brows delicately marked, her complexion pure lilies and roses; her hair was thick and smooth, and yet there were little ripples about it which gave it, even in its schoolgirl form, a look of distinction. Sibyl, on the contrary, was an undersized girl, with the fair, colorless face, pale-blue eyes, the lack of eyebrows and eyelashes, the hair thin and small in quantity, which make the most hopeless type of all as regards good looks.
“I wonder, Sib,” said Fanny, “if you, you little mite, are really eaten up with vanity?”
“I—vain! Why should you say so?”