Babs laughed. “To be as smart as a boy, as smart as some boys wouldn’t mean a lot; would it, Cara?” she countered.
“No. But he meant, of course, as smart as a smart boy——”
“Smarter than a smart boy?”
“Just let’s call it smart,” suggested Cara, but there was a seriousness about her manner that did not chime in with her words. Cara Burke was evidently trying to understand Barbara Hale.
Barbara was merely beginning to undress. She had never been so poky. She felt very unreal. All, or at least most of the things, she had planned to do she wasn’t doing, and she hated to change her mind. Pride again ruled her, for in the “making up of her mind” to anything, Barbara was what would be commonly called stubborn. She didn’t call it that; she considered it weak and foolish to be changeable. All of which must be explained to explain Barbara.
“But, just the same,” Cara continued speaking after a short pause, “you are smart.”
Barbara sighed. “Cara,” she sort of whispered for she was feeling queer, “I’m not really. Because I do things I am called upon to do I may seem different. But it isn’t that. It’s just because I am differently situated.”
Cara jumped up and coming over to where Barbara was sitting, on one of the ivory twin beds, threw her arms around her.
“We’re going to be chums, aren’t we, Babs?” she said warmly. “You may not admit you’re smart, but I think you are, and I’ve always longed to be chums with a girl like you.”
“Like me?” Barbara could feel her face burn. She was not at all what this lovely, simple-minded, frankly honest girl was thinking her to be. She wasn’t smart, she wasn’t different, she wasn’t “high-brow,” she was only a poser, one who was pretending. “Cara, I’m afraid you are going to be dreadfully disappointed in me,” she managed to say finally. “I’m not really anything but plain stubborn.”