"And you—you are that little girl—that little 'Ten-cents-a-bunch,' as I called you afterward to my father! Oh, oh, it all comes to me now; how mad I got because you stood up to me, and talked back to me. I suppose I was a great inquisitive brat, and fired off a lot of inquisitive questions at you,—I was always asking questions,—and you got mad at 'em and went for me, and then I got mad with you, and we had a regular squabble. I told my father about it, and he laughed and said, 'I don't think you had the best of it, Dolly;' and then I remember, too, something he said to Mary, my sister,—Mary had taken a great fancy to you,—something about your father knowing a lot about engines,—being a genius at that kind of thing; and then papa laughed again and asked me, if your father should turn out a millionaire some day, how'd I like my impudent little girl—that's you, you know—turning into a millionaire's daughter, and I said I'd say,'Ten cents a bunch to her,' and I have, I have! For your father has turned into a millionaire, hasn't he? and that's what it means, your being here, and your having a Stradivari violin! Oh, oh, oh, it's just like a story, just like a play—a Cinderella play; but," catching a queer expression on Hope's face, "I'm awfully sorry I hurt your feelings as I did, but you mustn't lay it up against me,—nobody ever lays anything up against me. I didn't mean to hurt your feelings, but I didn't know any better then, and anyhow, everything's come out all right for you now,—you've come up out of the soot and ashes just as Cinderella did, only your soot was engine soot, and you've come up at the top of everything, and I do say, now, that you are a great sight more swell in your looks and your manners and in yourself than Kate Van der Berg, I don't care what soot and ashes you came up from."
The queer expression on Hope's face had by this time deepened into something that looked like a wondering smile, a smile that seemed to say, "How perfectly astonishing this girl is!"
Dorothea saw the smile, and with a sudden acuteness that now and then came to her, hit upon its meaning, and cried out,—
"Oh, I see what you think,—I surprise you all round, I know, I'm so outspoken and blunt. Jimmy says I'm beastly blunt sometimes. I suppose in the first place that you expected me to have laid things up against you as you did against me; but, goody gracious, I never remember a quarter of what I say nor a quarter of what anybody else says after a while, and I'm always ready to make up, to jump over anything that's disagreeable if I'm met half-way; and you,—well, you've met me more than half-way in this business about Raymond Armitage, and if I had laid up anything you'd ever said,—and I do remember," laughing, "you said I was the most ignorant girl you'd ever seen,—I couldn't be mad with you for it now. No, I couldn't be anything but friendly to you,—and it's such jolly fun, too, the whole story,—my not remembering you, and the way it's turned out, and all; but look here, what's that you said about Kate Van der Berg,—that she might have been more sociable if it hadn't been for you? Did you tell her—I suppose you did—of our first meeting in the Brookside station, and the scrimmage we had, and that I hurt your feelings so dreadfully?"
"No; but after you had been here for a little time, Kate noticed that I—was rather stiff toward you."
"Yes, stiff and offish, but dreadfully polite, and in spite of it—the offishness, I mean—I liked you. Isn't it funny? But go on—Kate noticed that you were stiff toward me—"
"And she asked me what it was that I disliked in you, and I told her just this,—that you and I had met long ago when we were little girls, and that you had said something then that had hurt me that I had never forgotten, but that you had forgotten it and forgotten me. That was all. I thought it was better to tell her what I did than to try to turn the subject, because if I tried to do that she would have thought the matter worse than it was."
"Well, I suppose she told the girls what you said, and made much of it, and—"
"She told no one. I asked her at once not to speak of it, and she promised that she wouldn't, and I know that she didn't."
"But you—I don't see, when you have talked with her, as you must have done, you are so intimate with her—about your mayflower business and everything—how you could help mentioning our scrimmage."