Cara hesitated. “I am determined to let every girl do just as she pleases,” she remarked. “But I hate to leave you alone, Babs.”
“Please do,” begged Barbara. “I’m having a wonderful time,” and she sprang for a ball that tried to escape her racket, while Ruth again shouted merrily in applause.
Cara, Lida, Ruth, Louise and Esther, comprising the entire house party with Barbara excepted, started off along the winding path to the lake. Unconsciously Barbara sighed. It was good to be left alone.
CHAPTER VI
THE ACCIDENT
She should not have come. Somehow she didn’t seem to belong. For a single second Barbara considered flight. A glance towards the freedom of the road made the girl feel like a prisoner within those fairy-like grounds.
Then: “How silly!” her better judgment prompted, “when you know Cara wants you and the other girls—well, who could blame them for thinking one different when one felt different, acted differently, and was different?”
“Dad and Dora are just about now talking of the fun I’m having,” she reflected, as a cynical little titter rippled over her lips. But presently the racket again swung into action, and from the lake beyond the grove floated back gales of laughter. Those girls knew how to have a good time. They knew how to play.
“Born that way, I suppose,” Barbara continued to reason, “while I was born with a genius for a father and an angel for a mother. No wonder I’m different,” she decided, her sense of humor at least being all of its kind that any girl could wish for.
That so-called saving, sense of humor! Well, if it didn’t actually save one it helped a lot. Barbara Hale was perfectly willing to admit that fact at this very moment.
Bing! Biff! Bat! How the balls flew! And how her muscular young arm served that delicately strung racket, as finely adjusted as a precious violin and probably as well beloved by its proud possessor.