“Well, I am,” said Alexia, “just as ashamed as I can be. Oh dear me! I wish I could cry. But I'm too bad to cry. Polly Pepper, I'm going to run after that horrible Harrison girl. Oh misery! I wish she never had come to the Salisbury School.” Alexia made a mad rush down the avenue.
“Don't, Alexia, you'll hurt your arm,” warned Polly.
“I don't care—I hope I shall,” cried Alexia recklessly.
“It's no use to try to stop her,” said Jasper, “so let us go up to the house, Polly.”
So they started dismally enough, the girls, all except Polly, going over in sorry fashion how Cathie Harrison would probably make a fuss about the little affair—she was doubtless on her way to Miss Salisbury's now—and then perhaps there wouldn't be any picnic at all on the morrow. At this, Philena stopped short. “Girls, that would be too dreadful,” she gasped, “for anything!”
“Well, it would be just like her,” said Silvia Horne, “and I wish we never had taken her into our set. She's an old moping thing, and can't bear a word.”
“I wish so too,” declared Amy Garrett positively; “she doesn't belong with us; and she's always going to make trouble. And I hope she won't go to the picnic anyway, if we do have it, so there.”
“I don't think that is the way to mend the matter, Amy,” said Jasper gravely.
“Hoh, hoh!” exclaimed Pickering, “how you girls can go on so, I don't see; talking forever about one thing, instead of just settling it with a few fisticuffs. That would be comfortable now.”
The girls, one and all, turned a cold shoulder to him after this speech.