With the girls her popularity was undeniable, and the public disclosure of her social status notwithstanding, she retained it during the whole of her school life.
At the beginning of her second term at Myrtle House, a child about her own age came to school for the first time. Bridget always made much of the new girls, flying in the face of the time-honored tradition that they were to be treated as interlopers, and not allowed to display any “cheek” for several weeks.
“The stupidest idea I ever heard,” she declared, “just when they feel loneliest, and most miserable, to treat them badly, in case they should have cheek! Is it likely they’d feel cheeky the first fortnight, poor things? Did you feel cheeky? You cried for nights and nights. You know you did. So did I.”
Essie Langford—who had been petted and dosed with chocolates whenever she was discovered with her head in her locker, dissolved in tears, like a miserable little ostrich—naturally lost her heart to Bridget, and abandoned the idea of suicide.
“Will you let me be your friend?” she whispered one day, creeping up to her. Bridget sat in her favorite attitude, curled up on the floor, with her book on the sofa.
“Of course,” she returned, raising abstracted eyes for a second from the open page.
“Well, now let us tell each other what our fathers are,” said Essie, confidentially, lowering her voice, and glancing apprehensively round. “Mine has a sort of business, you know,—not a shop, of course,” she added hastily, “because there are wire blinds up at the windows, but—”
“I don’t want to know what your father is,” Bridget replied scornfully, forgetting her book. “What does it matter? I don’t know him. I know you, not your father.”
The girls were assembling for preparation of home lessons. They gradually drifted, as they generally did, over to Bridget’s side of the room.
“What does Bridget say, the darlint?” one of them inquired.