“Do say it, Jean. Glo will forgive you,” broke in Pat characteristically.
“Oh, you see,” interfered Trixy, “Hazel is temperamental. She has a voice. See how short a time she stayed here. Just a brief year——”
“Where is Hazel now?” asked Blanche Baldwin.
“She is at home when not at the conservatory,” replied Gloria. “Hazel really has a promising voice.”
“Ye-ah,” drawled Pat, with an uncertain smile and an impolite gulp.
“But I meant that, somehow, you don’t seem a bit like Hazel—in your ways,” came back Jean without so much consideration as a direct address with Gloria’s name to soften it.
Gloria bit her lip. Pat bit hers so hard it dragged the dimple out of her chin. Trixy, as usual, knew just what to say and she said it.
“Hazel has rather sophisticated ways for a girl brought up in Sandford. But then, it has always seemed to me, that big town folks are apt to overdo it; like strangers trying on the Boston accent.”
Gloria smiled at Trixy’s adroitness. She had deliberately turned the interests from Gloria’s possible mannerisms to Hazel’s. Still, a suppressed little twinge tugged at her consciousness. Was she different from the other girls? Were her tom-boyish, country ways rude or even rough?
More than once she had noticed surprised eyes staring at her when impulsively she had said or done something as she might have done at her old Barbend home, when Tommy Whitely would have shouted with glee or Mildred Graham chuckled delightedly. But no such result was achieved at Altmount. The girls there, with the exception of Pat and perhaps one or two others, all seemed bent upon outdoing their companions in correct social behavior.