“The plain girl—indeed, she is almost ugly—with the beautiful eyes,” said Stasy eagerly; “yes, she was awfully nice. But Mrs Harrowby spoilt it all. Just when everybody was standing up to go, she came bustling forward—”
“She doesn’t bustle,” interposed Blanche.
“Well, never mind—up she came, and began talking to those Wandle girls and me in a patronising sort of way: ‘Your roads lie in the same direction; you will be going home together, I suppose?’ I stared, and to do them justice, they looked uncomfortable. ‘Oh no,’ I said, ‘I think you do not know me. I came with my sister, Miss Derwent. I have not the—’ Then she interrupted me. ‘You don’t mean to say you have not made friends yet? and such near neighbours!’ And she was on the point, the very point, Blanche, of insisting on our ‘making friends,’ as she called it, when Lady Hebe came up about some books or something, and I managed to get out of the way. That was why I was fidgeting so to get hold of you. Blanchie, I won’t be treated like that. I wish we had never gone to that horrid tea-meeting.”
Blanche looked distressed.
“And yet, Stasy,” she said, “you were the one to want to make friends out of school, so to say, with some of the Blissmore girls—the very same class as those here, some of them actually relations.”
“Not all of the same class,” said Stasy; “some of them are much more ladies, only poor. And, besides, that would have been quite different, don’t you see, Blanchie? It would have been me, or us, being kind to them—not us being put on a level with them, as that Mrs Harrowby wanted to do. But I don’t think she will try that sort of thing again, with me, at least.”
“How did the girls take what you said?” her sister inquired quietly.
Stasy seemed a little uncomfortable.
“Oh well, you know, it wasn’t pleasant for them either. The dark one—she’s much cleverer and quicker than the pretty, stupid, fair one—the dark one looked very grave, and I think she got a very little red.”
“Poor girl!” said Blanche—and something in her tone made Stasy wince—“I daresay she did. They did not deserve to be punished, that I can see.”