“Yes, I know,” said Gueda. “It is very hard for you, Charlotte.”
“No one seems really to understand except Jerry, and now you,” said Charlotte. “I am afraid mamma is rather shocked at me. I suppose grown-up people don’t understand these feelings,” she added, little suspecting that the excess of her mother’s sympathy was what made her shrink from much expression of it, and she sighed deeply. “Why do some people have everything!” she went on, reverting to her old refrain. “It really does not seem fair. You know, Gueda, that it is a great deal because we are not rich that I want to get on very well. I may—don’t think me very conceited—but I may be able to write books when I am grown-up, or to do something of the kind.”
“But you are getting on well—as well as you could possibly wish.”
Charlotte shook her head.
“The teachers don’t all think so now” she replied, “and I am losing heart. Oh, Gueda, if I don’t get the German prize!”
“You must,” said Gueda. “I wish you could like her, Charlotte.”
“No, I don’t want to like her. I only wish she would go away—or still more, that she had never come. I don’t want to like her and she doesn’t want it either.”
Gueda looked rather perplexed.
“There’s something in that,” she said. “I don’t think it’s as much your fault as might seem at first. I can’t make her out. She seems good and nice altogether; but she must be selfish. She does seem so perfectly delighted when she is praised, and even put before you; and she does not really try to make friends with us. She might make you like her.”
Something was running in Gueda’s head about the best way of winning withheld liking or affection being to put oneself in the way of receiving a service from the one to be gained over. “If Miss Meredon cared to do it with Charlotte, she might. Charlotte is so generous: if she were appealed to by the girl to help her a little, she would respond at once, I know,” thought Gueda.