Claire laughed, her old, happy, gurgling laugh. It warmed her heart to have Janet Willoughby’s companionship once more.
“It isn’t exactly the orthodox attitude, is it? Perhaps you will be more justified this year, after you have got through your Christmas duties at home.”
“Yes! That’s a good idea. I shall, for it was pure unselfishness which prevented me running away last week with the rest of the party. Mother would have given in if I’d persisted, and I wanted to so dreadfully badly.” She sighed, and looked quite dejected, but Claire remained unmoved.
“I don’t pity you one bit. You have only a week to wait. That’s not a great trial of patience!”
“Oh, yes, it is.—Sometimes!” said Janet with an emphasis which gave the words an added eloquence.
Claire divined at once that Switzerland had an attraction apart from winter sports—an attraction centred in some individual member of the merry party. Could it by any chance be Erskine Fanshawe? She longed to ask the question. Not for a hundred pounds would she have asked the question. She hoped it was Captain Fanshawe. She hoped Janet would have a lovely time. Some girls had everything. Some had nothing. It was unfair—it was cruel. Oh, dear, what was the use of going to church, and coming out to have such mean, grudging thoughts? Janet Willoughby too! Such a dear! She deserved to be happy. Claire forced a smile, and said bravely—
“It will be all the nicer for waiting.”
“It couldn’t be nicer,” Janet replied.
Then she looked in the other girl’s face, and it struck her that the pretty eyelids had taken an additional shade of red, and her warm heart felt a throb of compunction. “Grumbling about my own little bothers, when she had so much to bear—hateful of me! I’ve been mean not to ask her again; mother wanted to; but she’s so pretty. I admired her so much that I was afraid—other people might too! But she was crying; I saw her cry. Perhaps she is lonely, and it’s my fault—”
“What do you generally do on Sundays?” she asked aloud. “There are lots of other mistresses at your school, aren’t there? I suppose you go about together, and have tea at each other’s rooms in the afternoon, and sit over the fire at night and talk, and brew cocoa, as the girls do in novels. It all sounds so interesting. The girls are generally rather plain and very learned; but there is always one among them who is like you. I don’t mean that you are not learned—I’m sure you are—but—er—pretty, you know, and attractive, and fond of things! And all the others adore her, and are jealous if she is nicer to one than to the others...”