“Oh, do stop about family and heirlooms,” cried Alexia impatiently; “the main thing is that our Miss Salisbury isn't going to desert us.”
“Miss Anstice is; oh, goody!” Amy Garrett hopped up and down and softly beat her hands while she finished the sentence.
“Hush!” Alexia turned on her suddenly. “Now, Amy, and the rest of you girls, I think we ought to stop this nonsense about Miss Anstice; she's going, and I, maybe, haven't treated her just rightly.”
“Of course you haven't,” assented Clem coolly. “You've worried her life nearly out of her.”
“And oh, dear me! I'm sorry now,”—said Alexia, not minding in the least what Clem was saying. “I wonder why it is that I'm forever being sorry about things.”
“Because you're forever having your own way,” said Clem; “I'll tell you.”
“And so I'm going to be nice to her now,” said Alexia, with a perfectly composed glance at Clem. “Let's all be, girls. I mean, behind her back.”
Polly Pepper ran over across the room to slip her arm within Alexia's, and give her a little approving pat.
“It will be so strange not to make fun of her,” observed Amy Garrett, “but I suppose we can't now, anyway, that she is to be Mrs. John Clemcy.”
“Mrs. John Clemcy, indeed!” exclaimed Alexia, standing very tall. “She was just as nice before, as sister of our Miss Salisbury, I'd have you to know, girls.”