“I’ll say good morning. I’ve enjoyed your little party immensely,” and Frances marched out of the room and banged the door.
“I should think you would have learned a lesson by this time, Molly Brown,” cried Judy hotly. “There is always a row whenever that girl is around. She can’t be nice, and there is no use trying to make her over.”
“I’m sorry,” said Molly penitently. “I wish I could understand why she behaves that way when she knows it’s going to take away what few friends she has.”
“I think I can tell you,” put in Mabel Hinton. “Nobody likes her, and nobody expects any good of her. If you are constantly on the lookout for bad traits, they are sure to appear. It’s almost a natural law. Everybody was expecting this to-day, and so it happened, of course. If we had been cordial and sweet to her, she never would have said that about Mary Stewart or the food at Queen’s, either.”
“Dear me, are we listening to a sermon,” broke in Judy flippantly.
But, in spite of Judy’s interruption, Mabel’s speech made an impression on the girls, some of whom felt a little ashamed of their attitude toward Frances Andrews.
“Did you ever see a dog that had been kicked all its life?” went on Mabel; “how it snarls and bites and snaps at anybody who tries to pet it? Well, Frances is just a poor kicked dog. She’s done something she ought not to have done, and she’s been kicked out for it, and she’s so sore and unhappy, she snarls at everybody who comes near her.”
“Mabel, you’re a brick!” exclaimed Sallie Marks. “I started the fight this morning and I’m ashamed of it. I’m going to make a resolution to be nice to that poor girl hereafter, no matter how horrid she is. It will be an interesting experiment, if for no other reason.”
“Let’s form a society,” put in Molly, “to reinstate Frances Andrews, and the way to do it will be to be as nice as we can to her and to say nice things about her to the other girls.”
“Good work!” cried Margaret Wakefield, scenting another opportunity to draw up a constitution, by-laws and resolutions. “We will call a first meeting right now, and elect officers. I move that Molly be made chairman of the meeting.”