"Oh, I don't know; I don't get much time," said Gretta desperately, looking about as if meditating flight from this determined girl with whom she had not the slightest desire to make friends, and whose accent and little air of being accustomed to another world than that of the country girl embarrassed and annoyed her.
To her dismay, Happie seated herself on the grass at her side. "I don't believe there's any risk in sitting on the grass, if it is only May," she said. "It's as warm as June, and it must be dry. I think you need a friend, Gretta, and I want you to look at me hard and see if you don't think I could be she. The girls in New York rather liked me."
She thrust her head forward, inviting inspection as she applied for the position, and Gretta looked into the laughing eyes, and into the sweet, dimpling face bent towards her. Her own dark eyes lighted with pleasure in what she saw, and in spite of her shyness, she laughed a little.
"You don't want me for a friend; I'm different," she said.
"You look nice," announced Happie emphatically, "and I'd like to have you try me. If you mean that I've lived in the city, and so had more chance than you to get at books, besides having a clever and learned duck of a mother to teach me, while you have been all your life motherless, and far from libraries and good schools, besides being as busy as a bee, I think that's more to your credit than mine. If we liked each other, I could give you what I got out of books, and you could teach me how to be useful—wouldn't that be a good bargain for us both?"
Gretchen Engel turned to Happie with full appreciation of the kindly tact that so delicately, yet firmly grappled with her unspoken sensitiveness, and put on a level with herself the sweet girl, whose advantages had been many, while hers had been none at all. Her eyes filled with tears; she had a nature that was profoundly loving, and she was starving for kindness. Something had set her apart from the other girls who gathered with her through the winter in the little schoolhouse, and she was scolded all day long for doing her patient best in her meagre and reluctant home. Happie had guessed right that she was desperately lonely; she had not begun to conjecture how lonely, nor how much despair was mingling in that loneliness, though Gretta was but a girl of fourteen. No one could have needed nor wanted a friend more than pretty Gretta.
Seeing the sincerity that shone upon her from Happie's face, feeling her lovableness as she felt the warmth of the May sunshine, Gretta succumbed to her charm, forgetting to be shy.
"You're good," she said decidedly. "I'd like to be friends with you, if you could stand me, but I don't know when we'd ever get to see each other."
Happie gave a little hitch to her chin that meant determination.
"You must be outdoors a good deal to get that beautiful brown tint of yours; it will be queer if we can't get together. I never saw a pair of girls yet that couldn't outwit a pair of old cousins if they set out to do it," she said. "They are your cousins with whom you live, aren't they? Rosie Gruber is living with us, and she told me about you."