Elsie was pitied and petted to her heart's content, while Dora beamed on them like a genial little sun which had at last made its way through the clouds.
Aunt Zélie heard the whole story that night.
"Wasn't it funny, Elsie's getting caught?" said Louise. "I believe it is really a magic door; Dora thinks so too."
"I don't know. It seems to me if the rest of you had been as anxious for peace as she was, the door need not have come to your relief. If you had each been trying to help," said her aunt.
"I believe I have been forgetting the text," Bess said gravely.
If only the quarrel between Carl and Ikey could have been settled as quickly. A week passed and matters did not mend. The walk to and from school was now taken alone, and neither made any sign of recognition when they met. Ikey was miserable at the sight of Carl's intimacy with Jim, and he imagined, too, that Mrs. Howard took her nephew's part, and this was hardest of all.
The fact was Aunt Zélie knew little or nothing about it. She had a house full of company, and Carie was sick besides.
In spite of appearances to the contrary, Carl was no happier than his friend, and quite as keenly missed the daily companionship in lessons and play. It had its effect in making him overbearing and fault-finding in an unusual degree. The family began to wonder what had happened to merry, good-tempered Carl, when one Saturday morning matters reached a climax. As he came upstairs from the library where he had been copying a composition, his father called to him from the hall below. Running into the girls' room, he laid his paper on the table there, with strict injunctions to them not to touch it.
Some minutes passed before his return, and Helen, who was apt to be attracted by forbidden fruit, could not resist going over to look at it. "I only want to see if I can read it," she said in reply to a warning word from Bess, who passed through the room on her way to the star chamber, where she and Louise were busy.
Helen, left to herself, was seized with a desire to make a capital S like Carl's. Finding a pen and some ink, she set to work, forgetting everything else till Bess, returning for something, exclaimed, "Why, Helen, what are you doing? Here he comes."