“I’ll tell you what, May! If the bead-loom you expect to make turns out half as fine as that chest, it will be better than mine,” praised Zan. “I never saw a girl handle tools as naturally and deftly as you do—for a greenhorn, too!”
May laughed in a pleased tone for honest praise is sweet.
“What is Eleanor Wilbur making, girls?” asked Hilda.
“I don’t know—she hasn’t been with us yet, you know,” replied Anne Mason, evasively.
“Is she doing anything else besides making trouble?” asked May Randall, in her blunt way.
“I’ll thank you to mind your own business, Miss May Randall,” called a voice from the door.
The girls flushed guiltily as they looked up and found Eleanor herself trembling with anger. She had stopped at Zan’s house to leave a borrowed book and the maid told her the girls were on the back-porch working. So she happened there unannounced.
“Well, are you, Eleanor?” persisted May, defiantly.
“I’ll tell you what’s troubling you, all right—you dog-in-the-manger, you! You’re afraid I’ll win out ahead of you in the test for membership, so you go to work in an underhanded way to prejudice the others against me,” declared Eleanor.
“Hardly, Miss Wilbur, for Zan just told us that Ethel handed her a letter to be read at the weekly Council. She is to go to California next month to be gone all Winter so she has withdrawn her application till Spring,” snapped May, with satisfaction.