But here Margaret interfered. “You shall hear everything presently, Sibyl,” she said; “but just now we are having a little confab with dear Fanny’s friends, so do you mind leaving us alone together?”
Sibyl colored angrily. “I am sure I don’t care,” she said; “and if you are going to be stuck-up and snappish and disagreeable just because you happen to call yourselves the Specialities, you needn’t expect me to take an interest in you. I am just off for a game of tennis, and shall have a far better time than you all, hobnobbing in this close room.”
“Yes, the room is very close,” exclaimed Betty. Then she added, “I do not think I shall like the South of England at all; it seems to be without air.”
“Oh, you’ll soon get over that!” laughed Susie. “Besides,” she continued, “winter is coming; and I can tell you we find winter very cold, even here.”
“I am glad of that,” said Betty. “I hate hot weather; unless, indeed,” she added, “when you can lie flat on your back, in the centre of one of the moors, and watch the sky with the sun blazing down on you.”
“But you must never lie anywhere near a flat stone,” exclaimed Sylvia, “or an adder may come out, and that isn’t a bit jolly!”
Sibyl had not yet moved off, but was standing with her mouth slightly gaping and her round eyes full of horror.
“Do go! do go, Sibyl!” said Mary Bertram; and Sibyl went, to tell wonderful stories to her own special friends all about these oddest of girls who kept monstrous spiders—spiders that had to be fed on raw meat—and who themselves lay on the moors where adders were to be found.
“Now tell us about Dickie,” said Susie, who was always the first to make friends.