“Will I do what?” asked Fanny.
“Well, I suppose there is a kitchen in the house, and you can get a bit of raw meat. It’s for Dickie.”
“Oh,” said Fanny, coming forward on tiptoe and peeping into the box, “you can’t keep that terror here—you simply won’t be allowed to have it! Have you no idea what school-life is like?”
“No,” said Betty; “and what is more, I don’t want you to tell me. Dickie darling, I’d let you pinch my finger if it would do you any good. Sylvia, what use are you if you can’t feed your own spider? If Fan won’t oblige her cousins when she knows the ways of the house, I presume you have a pair of legs and can use them? Go to the kitchen at once and get a piece of raw meat.”
“I don’t know where it is,” said Sylvia, looking slightly frightened.
“Well, you can ask. Go on; ask until you find. Now, be off with you!”
“You had better not,” said Fanny. “Why, you will meet all the girls coming out of the different classrooms!”
“What do girls matter,” said Betty in a withering voice, “when Dickie is hungry?”
Sylvia gathered up her courage and departed. Betty laid the glass box which contained the spider on the dressing-table.
If Fanny had not been slightly afraid of these bold northern cousins of hers, she would have dashed the box out on the balcony and released poor Dickie, giving him back to his natural mode of life. “What queer dresses you are wearing!” she said. “Do, please, change them before lunch. You were not dressed like this when I saw you last. You were never fashionable, but this stuff——”