“I wonder,” said Grace, after a long pause, “if it would be any use confiding in mother? Mother would not like to see us ruined just for the sake of a few frocks.”
“I know that,” replied Anne; “but you know quite well, Gracie, that you and I would not be exactly ruined in the matter. We’d have a bad time, no doubt; but, still, nothing could part us from our father and mother and our home. No, it’s Kitty Merrydew I’m thinking about. For some extraordinary reason father has turned against Kitty, whom he used to be so fond of, and if he discovered that she had been buying frocks at our expense, why, he’d just go and see Mrs. Fleming and get her expelled from the school, or he’d take us away. Somehow or other I really think that poor Kitty is getting into hot water all round, and I’ve no doubt whatever if this awful thing were known that Kitty would go. That would ruin Kitty—ruin her for ever. Grace, we must not let it happen; at any risk we must prevent it. I don’t pretend that I love her as I did; but she used to be a great, great friend, and we must not let this happen. What is to be done?”
The girls pondered over this puzzle of puzzles, coming to no solution of any sort, and in consequence lying awake for some time even after their heads pressed their downy pillows. But perhaps the person who was even more anxious than the girls themselves was honest Mr. Dodd. He paced up and down his luxuriously furnished drawing-room, his hands thrust into his trouser-pockets, a frown between his brows. “Mary Anne,” he said to his wife, “I’m in a bit of a fluster.”
“And what’s that, John, my man?”
“Well, it’s about the girls.”
“I’m sure, John, I don’t know why you should be in a fluster about them; they look remarkably well.”
“It isn’t their looks; it’s nothing to do with their looks. I think Grace will be a very handsome woman, very like what you were, Mary Anne, in the days when I was courting you.”
“Handsome or not,” said Mrs. Dodd, “the great thing for Grace is to be good.”
“Oh, of course, my dear; do you think I’d own a girl who wasn’t straight? Of course, they’re both straight, straight enough; but I tell you what it is, Mary Anne. I don’t know how long they’ll stay straight if that Imp remains at the school; that’s what’s fretting me—it’s fretting me more than enough. Positively, I assure you, it’s taking my rest from me. I’m convinced, I’m positive, that that girl has a bad influence on my girls.”
“I wish, John, you’d tell me why you turned against Kitty. How well I remember when she came last summer you were so taken up with her; it was, ‘Kitty this,’ ‘Kitty that.’ Don’t you remember going to town one day and bringing her back a lovely gold hunter watch and a massive gold chain; and I said that, seeing she wasn’t rich, the present was a bit too handsome for her, but you wouldn’t listen to a word. Then what on earth can have changed you, John?”