"But Will isn't your brother," insisted Grace stubbornly. "If he were, maybe you would feel differently."
There was a moment's pause.
"No he isn't my brother," returned Betty, knowing she was going to hurt her friend but believing that the result would justify the means. "But if he were I would try to behave so that when he came back he would have a right to be proud of me."
"Betty Nelson!" Grace sprang out of bed with her eyes blazing, "do you know what you are saying? Do you mean that if Will should come back, he wouldn't be proud of me?"
"Not if you keep on taking your trouble lying down," said Betty, sticking gamely to her guns, though she was a little frightened at the success of her experiment.
"I may," she thought to herself, "have done not wisely, but too well."
However, after one outraged and enraged stare at Betty, Grace pointedly turned her back and began hastily to pull on her clothes. She finished dressing before Betty, and without a word left the room.
"Now you have done it, Betty, my dear," said Betty making a little face at her pretty reflection in the mirror. "I shouldn't wonder if Grace would never speak to you again. Poor Gracie, perhaps I shouldn't have said what I did, but I simply had to start something."
On her way downstairs she tapped at Mollie's door and found that she and Amy were both up and dressing.
"Come in," called Mollie; "I need your help. Amy's eyes are so swollen," she explained, as Betty obeyed, "that she can't see to do me up. Just the middle one, Betty. That's a dear."