"Anyway, I'm sorry for you," said Pamela earnestly.
"What on earth for?" asked Isobel, slightly nettled.
"Because you'll miss some of the best things in life," replied Pamela.
"Not if I'm rich, I shan't," said Isobel.
Caroline had listened in mild surprise at all this. It had never struck her that there could be anything to object to in Mrs Lester's attitude.
"Do you know," she said, changing the conversation, "I had to pay for the hire of my kimono. I hadn't expected to have to pay after giving my services free, and making so many things for the bazaar. But it all goes to a good cause, I suppose."
Caroline had rather regretted that none of the other three girls had been present at the bazaar in the afternoon, to see how rapidly her tea-cosies had sold; but each of the three had had a different excuse for not coming. Isobel's absence, of course, was a foregone conclusion—she would have loved to go, but could not on account of Miss Crabingway's instructions.
Pamela, as we know, hated bazaars. "Don't ask me to come, Caroline," she had said kindly. "But will you take this donation for 'the cause' and put it in one of the boxes or whatever they have to collect the money in."
Caroline had had hopes that Beryl, at any rate, would not like to refuse to come. But lack of money to spend made Beryl desperate, and, although she was quite resolved in her own mind not to go, she half promised Caroline she would go, if she felt up to it. She even made a feint of preparing to go. Then a sudden imaginary attack of neuralgia made it impossible, and she sent word by Pamela to tell Caroline not to wait, and went and lay down in her bedroom and pulled down the blind. There in her cool and darkened room she listened to Caroline departing, and felt very much ashamed of herself for the story she had made up about neuralgia.
"But I couldn't explain that I had no money—and why," she made excuses to herself. "Oh, it isn't fair!"