"I'm afraid stupid little accidents fill rather a large place in the world, Jennie."
"I hate them having anything to do with me anyhow. And with having to take the towels home I only just caught the tram——"
"What's that?" I took her up. "You did catch the tram? Then it wasn't that that made you late at all. You'd have been waiting for the tram if you hadn't been waiting for Miss Oliphant."
"Well, I don't care. It's all—all—-"
She did not say what, but hit the pergola with her hand again.
I was too sorry for her to be hurt by her words about Julia. That little slip about the tram had completely betrayed her, and it was against chance, and not against Julia, that she sought an occasion. Nevertheless the merciless mistrust of youth lay behind. The beginning and end of it was that she didn't like Julia, and her young heart had not yet learned the duplicity that makes us more rather than less sweet to those whom we dislike. She broke out again:
"And I won't go to that dance to-morrow! I won't be scolded and given a new frock and told I mustn't go out of the house! Mother and Miss Oliphant can go without me, and when I get back to London I shall earn my own living and I shall be able to do what I like then!"
"Very few people who earn their own living do what they like, Jennie."
"Well, it'll be a change anyway," she retorted.
A cheerful call of "Jen-nie-e-e!" came from the house. We all used a marked brightness in speaking to Jennie that evening.