Their three new friends nodded solemnly and Jessie pounded one small brown fist in the other by way of emphasis.
"There's something funny about the friendship between those two," she said. "I guess every girl in the school has tried to get Lily Darrow away from Kate at some time or other——"
"We all feel sorry for Lily—she has such a frightful time of it," Doris said, in an aside.
"But she won't budge," Jessie finished. "She hates Kate——"
"Any one could see that with half an eye!" drawled Gladys Holt.
"And she's mortally afraid of her, and yet she sticks to her like a fly to flypaper," finished Jessie. "We can't understand it, and it makes us mad."
"Is Lily Darrow the only close friend Kate has?" asked Jo, who had listened to all this with great interest.
"Oh, my goodness, no!"
The three visitors exchanged laughing glances and Jessie chuckled audibly.
"Kate has what Miss Slade, our dramatics teacher, calls an 'understudy,'" Jessie explained. "Lottie Sparks is her shadow. She thinks Kate is grand because she has a lot of money, and she does exactly what Kate tells her to do."