"You are quite my very greatest friend, you know, Rosy," said Christian. "There's Belle Webster and Bertha Hole; they think themselves quite chummy with me, but you are my real friend. We understand each other, we have had so many thrills together."
"Oh, yes," said Rose, "yes! Only I don't like you when you are Charlotte Corday. I was Marat once, you know, and I didn't like that time."
"Well, I'm not Charlotte now. Perhaps I'll never be again. But listen. The secret is our secret. It is too funny, Rosy. The rest of the house think that it is theirs, but it is ours all the time. Now then! I was so cold up in my attic—my darling fairy attic—this afternoon that I ran down to get warm in mother's boudoir. I hid myself behind the curtains. It was so cozy that I dropped asleep. I was lying on the window ledge, and there were cushions, and a soft pillow, and everything to make it delicious. When I woke I heard mother talking to that horrid Neil woman."
"I know her," said Rose. "She snubbed me once awfully; she said I had no call to be coming here so often."
"Well, she has no more right in the house than you have," replied Christian. "But now you will be astonished."
She proceeded to relate the entire story—all that her mother had said, and all that Miss Neil had said; and having given the outlines, she further impressed the fact on Rose that she, Christian, was to be sent to school next week. She was to be sent to school, as it were, in the dark, and she was not to be told anything about it until the night before she went.
"They want to keep it dark until the very last minute," she said. "It is fun, isn't it, Rose?"
"Fun," said Rose—"fun!"
Her voice quivered. It quivered so much that it suddenly ended in a choking sob.