"Then you will be good to her, won't you, Kate? She's never been at a big school of this kind before."
"She must take her chance," replied Kate. "It strikes me she won't be so badly off with you to be her champion."
"Of course, I'll be her champion," replied Molly, her face turning crimson, for she began to be really angry at last.
"Then if you're so afraid for the comfort of the precious thing, why don't you give up your room, and sleep in the cubicle next me in dormitory A? My manners may not be refined, and I may not be a real lady, and my poverty may make it essential for you to be kind to me; nevertheless——"
"Kate, Kate, I won't stand this!" cried the astonished Molly. "What in the wide world do you mean? You speak and look as if you were angry about something; you speak and look as if you were angry with me—with me, who love you so! What is it? You must and shall tell me."
But Kate O'Connor's only reply was to slam the door of Molly's room with violence, and rush away up to her own dormitory.
There she flung her exercise books and translations on her little dressing-table, threw herself down upon her bed, and burst into floods of bitter weeping.
"Oh, she can't have said it!" she groaned to herself; "she looked so sweet, and she seemed so astonished when I threw those taunting words at her. And yet—and yet, no one else knows; I have never confided my real story to anyone but Molly Lavender. Matilda is a wretch, but she could not have invented all this. Yes, there must be some truth in it; and if Molly is that sort of girl, I will never, never, have anything more to do with her. All the same, I'm miserable, for I was beginning to love her as I have loved no one else since I left dear old Ireland. Oh, dear, dear, if I were only back in the old time! Think of home in the summer, the cows, Cusha, Bess, Star, Whiteface; don't I see them now walking slowly up the valley with the evening sun behind them, and their dear old tails switching, and grandfather standing by the hedge at the corner of the lane, and crying 'Kate, Kate, come along and watch the milking!' Oh, yes! I was happy in those days; I had no ambition then, only to be the fleetest runner, and the best swimmer, and the best rider of any girl in the country round. Oh, for a gallop now on Black Beauty's back! oh, for a sniff of the mountain air! oh, for a taste of the buttermilk and scones at supper time by grandfather's side! Well, it's all over; he's in his grave, and the cows are sold, and so is the old house, and the place belongs to strangers, and there was just enough money left to educate Kate O'Connor, and turn her into a fine lady.
"A fine lady! How I hate the term! I declare I think I'll go to-morrow and tell every single girl in this house all about myself. How once I ran about barefooted, and how I used to know a great deal more about making butter than about Greek and Latin, and how my one gift was, just that I could sing like a bird, and whistle so well that the little wild birds themselves would come out of the hedges and cock their bright eyes at me, and whistle, too, when I lured them long enough. I'd like to tell them all—all those conceited girls—that I'm not ashamed of the old days, and that I'd rather be back in them than be the very grandest of them all. Oh, Molly, I did think you were faithful to me! I remember your face when I told you something of the old life; how soft your eyes grew, and you held my hand and pressed it a little, and then you said you wished you could write a poem about it. But you are a traitor, Molly Lavender, and you told! You must have told, for no one else knows. Granted even that you didn't say the horrid things which Matilda Matthews accuses you of saying, you are a traitor, and I'll never be your friend again as long as I live."
"Kate," called a voice near her ear from the other side of her dormitory, "did you not hear the supper gong?"