“I think you are just awfully nice,” said Sylvia. “We were so terrified when we came to this school. We thought we’d have an awful time. We still speak of it as a prison, you know. Do you speak of it to your dearest friend as a prison?”
“Prison!” said Margaret. “There isn’t a place in the world I love as I love Haddo Court.”
“Then you never, never lived in a dear little gray stone house on a wild Scotch moor; and you never had a man like Donald Macfarlane to talk to, nor a woman like Jean Macfarlane to make scones for you; and you never had dogs like our dogs up there, nor a horse like David. I pity you from my heart!”
“I never had any of those things,” said Margaret; “but I shall like to hear about them from you.”
“And so shall I like to hear about them,” said Olive.
“We will tell you, if Betty gives us leave,” said one of the twins. “We never do anything without Betty’s leave. She is the person we look up to, and obey, and follow. We’d follow her to the world’s end; we’d die for her, both of us, if it would do her any good.”
Margaret took Sylvia’s hand and began to smooth it softly. “I wish,” she said then in a slow voice, “that I had friends to love me as you love your sister.”
“Perhaps you aren’t worthy,” said Sylvia. “There is no one living like Betty in all the world, and we feel about her as we do because she is Betty.”
“But, all the same,” said Hester, frowning as she spoke, “our Betty has got an enemy.”