"I want you to be brave yourself," cried Peggy; and Lobelia started again, and shrank in her chair. "Don't be so—so—well, I don't know any word but meeching, and Margaret won't let me say that. But have a spirit of your own, and stand up to them, and give 'em as good as they send. I would, I tell you, quick enough, if they tried it on me."
Lobelia looked at her with hopeless eyes. "But I am not you!" she said. "I—Peggy, I know just how I look, and how I seem, and how little and ugly and queer I am. I don't wonder they laugh, I don't, really. I haven't any spirit, either; I can't have. You can't do anything with me; it isn't any use."
Peggy gazed at her, with eyes almost as hopeless as her own. Yet she must make one more attempt; and with it the honest blood came into her face.
"Look here, Lobelia!" she said, "I am awkward, too, and shy, and—and stupid, awfully stupid. Why, my cousin Rita used to call me—never mind, that was only before she grew so kind! But I know what it is to be laughed at, my dear! Only this morning, in rhetoric, Miss Pugsley was just as hateful as she could be, and all the girls laughed; yes, they did. So you are not so different as you think. Why,—I don't mind telling you,—when I came along just now, I was trying to get to my own room, so that I could have a good cry. There, Lobelia! now how do you feel?" Lobelia raised her eyes with a wondering look; but next moment her eyes fell on the looking-glass and she shook her head.
"No!" she said. "No, Peggy! You are kind, and you want to make me feel comfortable; but look!"
She motioned toward the mirror. Peggy looked, and her kind heart sank. She herself was no beauty; her round, fair face and honest blue eyes were pleasant to look at, and she had beautiful hair, but that was all; yet she could not help seeing that she was a very vision of loveliness beside the sallow, puny, almost deformed aspect of her poor little neighbour. She coloured deep with angry sympathy, but Lobelia only smiled, a wan little smile.
"You see!" she said. "It's no use, Peggy."
For all answer, Peggy threw her arms around the shrinking figure, and pressed it in a warm embrace. "I don't care!" she cried. "I don't say you are pretty, you poor little thing, but just remember that you are my friend, and if anybody dares to meddle with you again, they'll have to reckon with me, that's all. And now I must go, or I shall lose all the drill. Cheer up, Lobelia, and don't sit here and mope, mind! and if you have any more trouble, just knock on the floor, and I'll be up in half a quarter of a jiffy. Good-bye, dear!" and off she ran, feeling that at least she had left some degree of comfort and cheer behind her.
Soon, however, came something that put Lobelia Parkins and her troubles out of Peggy's head for the time. Bertha Haughton was not at the gymnasium, but when Peggy came back to her own room after an hour of rapture, she found a note pinned on her pincushion.
"Dear Peggy:—Study hard, please, and get through before this evening. The Snowy Owl is going to give us a Grand Tell about the wedding she has been to, and we both want you to come, too. I'm going to speak to Miss Russell, but you'd better ask her, too; it will be all right, for the Snowy has asked permission, anyhow. Eight o'clock, just after reading; be sure to come on time!