"Sometime! I believe she is trying to do it now. I believe that that is the mischief she and her cousin Lizzy are planning this moment," cried Mary.
"What do you mean?"
"I'll tell you;" and Mary related, as she had related to her mother, what she had seen and heard.
"Nelly Ryder has never forgiven Angela for getting the history prize; Nelly thought herself sure of it,—she as good as told me so," was Anna's only remark upon this.
"And now she's going to play some trick on Angela to take her down, as she calls it; that's what you think, isn't it? And that's what I think. Oh, Anna, I wish I could ferret out the mischief and stop it. It will be something hateful and mortifying to poor Angela, I know. If I could only get some clew to what it is, so as to warn her."
"Yes; but as we are not sure that there is any mischief, after all, you mustn't say anything to anybody yet."
"No, of course not; but I'll keep a sharp lookout, and I may hear or see something that will give me a hint. What fun it would be to outwit one of the Ryder schemes!"
"Mary! with all your Quaker bringing-up, I do believe you are just pining for what our Jack would call 'a scrimmage.'"
"Well, I am, if that means getting the better of mischief-makers," Mary confessed with a laugh.
"But you won't succeed, if the mischief-makers are Nelly and Lizzy Ryder, Those, girls seem to get the best of everything and everybody. Think now, for one thing, of their being acquaintances of Marian Selwyn's, and invited to her birthday party!"