“Well, Dumps,” she said, “I wonder how you’ll like it?”
“Like what?” I asked.
Rita began to laugh rather immoderately. She looked at Agnes, who also came up at that moment.
“I don’t believe Dumps knows,” she said.
“Know what?” I asked angrily.
“Why, what is about to happen. Oh, what a joke!”
“What is it?” I asked again. I was so curious that I didn’t mind even their rude remarks at that moment.
“She doesn’t know—she doesn’t know!” laughed Rita, and she jumped softly up and down. “What fun! What fun! Just to think of a thing of that sort going to take place in her very own house—in her very own, own house—and she not even to have a suspicion of it!”
“Oh, if it’s anything to do with home, I know everything about my home,” I said in a very haughty tone, “and I don’t want you to tell me.”
I marched past the two girls and entered the schoolroom. But during the rest of the morning I am afraid I was not very attentive to my lessons. I could not help wondering what they meant, and what there was to know. But of course there was nothing. They were such silly girls, and I could not understand for one moment how I had ever come to be friends with them.