Katie flung herself out of her friend's grasp.
"I can put up with your treachery," she cried. "Oh! I can stand that; but to hear you insult Philip is what I will not, I will not bear!"
Upon which Lilias sprang to her feet also.
"I will say just what I please of Philip," she cried; "and who is to stop me? What am I caring about Philip? I just endured him because of you. He neither went with me to parties, nor danced with me, nor was with us every day. He is just a long-leggit lad, as Margaret says. If he was rich or great, or if he was clever and wise, or even if he was just kind—kind and true like some——But he is none of these, none of these, Katie, not half good enough for you; and me, what is Philip to me?" Lilias cried, with a grand disdain.
"Perhaps he has forsaken you—too," said Katie, looking at her with mingled wrath and relief and indignation. She was very wroth and wounded for Philip, but her heart, which had been so sore, felt cooled and eased as by the dropping of some heavenly dew. Her anger with Lilias was boundless. She could not refrain from that little blow at her, and yet she could have embraced her for every careless word she said.
Lilias looked at her for a moment, uncertain whether to be angry too. But then the absurdity of the idea that Philip might have forsaken her, suddenly seized her. She laughed out with a gaiety that could not be mistaken, and took her seat again.
"When you are done questioning me about Philip—" she said. "I would not have remembered Philip but for you. We forgot he was to have come home with us, and never let him know; and nobody remembered, not even Jean. But we have heard enough of Philip since we came home. His mother has been here, demanding, 'What have you done with my Philip?'" Lilias here fell into Mrs. Stormont's tone, and Katie, though still in tears, had hard ado not to laugh. "Just demanding him from Margaret and from me: and you next, Katie. As if we were Philip's keepers! He is big enough, I hope, to take care of himself."
Here Katie came stealing up to her friend, winding a timid arm about her neck.
"Oh! Lilias, was it all stories? and are you true, are you true?"
"Is that what has made you just a little ghost? And why did you never write and tell me, when I could have put it all right with a word?"