“I don’t know what I would do if I was to get fat like Mrs. Foley,” she complained. “Mrs. Foley always said she was skinny just like me when she was a kid, and she didn’t begin to put on flesh till she was forty. Just think, if I was to get fat like her, I couldn’t never wear no more stylish clo’es!” and she gazed at the girls with tragic eyes.
“You are right, you couldn’t!” laughed Amy, adding in an undertone to Jessie, “Just imagine Mrs. Foley in a coat suit!”
As they started to leave the restaurant, Amy suddenly turned and made as though she would retrace her steps.
“What’s the matter?” asked Henrietta, solicitously. “See a snake or somethin’?”
“Something lots worse,” returned Amy, with a giggle, and pointed to a group of girls who had just turned the corner and were coming toward them. “Here come Belle Ringold and Sally, Jess. Can’t we dive into a hole somewhere until they get past?”
“Too late,” sighed Jessie, with a sure knowledge of unpleasantness to come. “If we had only known we could have stayed in the restaurant and avoided them. Well, come along. We can’t get away from them now.”
Belle Ringold and Sally Moon were two very unpleasant girls whom most of the people in New Melford disliked intensely. Belle and Sally had few friends, and those only the kind whose friendship can be bought with money and good times.
Because Jessie and Amy, on the other hand, were popular with their townspeople and belonged to the class of girls who “do something,” Belle and Sally centered their spleen upon them, and the girls rarely met but what unpleasant words were passed. For that reason Jessie and Amy avoided the unpleasant girls whenever it was possible to do so. Now, however, it seemed that a meeting was inevitable.
Jessie and Amy, with Bertha and Hen beside them, quickened their pace in order to pass Belle Ringold and her “crowd” as soon as possible.
It was plain that Belle welcomed the meeting as much as the other girls disliked it, for quarreling, especially with such foes as Jessie and Amy, was the breath of life to her. So, instead of stepping aside to let them pass, she stopped directly in front of them, making it impossible for them to get by without walking into the street.