Griffin grinned good-naturedly. "Keep your righteous wrath for the right fellow, young 'un. When you've been in the night life as many years as I have, you'll know that we don't choose a leader—she simply elects herself by taking the head of the procession. We never know who's who after we rig up. That's part of the game. So, you see, it may have been the charming Doris, or Howes here, or my unworthy self, that put those obnoxious questions to your sister—no one knows for sure, and the mean cuss won't tell."
"Why should she want to be horrid to Elinor?" persisted Patricia, frowning a little in her earnestness. "We don't know her very well yet, but she's been perfectly sweet to us both."
"That describes her to a T, doesn't it, Howes?" grinned the imperturbable Griffin. "That's the way we find her—so sweet that she is sickening, eh?"
"Hush, she'll hear you!" warned Howes, laughing a little, nevertheless, whereupon Patricia instantly decided that she had been mistaken in Margaret Howes' character, and that she was less open-minded and warm-hearted than she had believed.
"I can't see why you should pitch on her," insisted Patricia, kneading her cake into pills in her agitation. "What could she have against Elinor?"
Griffin yawned elaborately and then addressed Margaret Howes with lifted eyebrows.
"This young person, though evidently of an investigating turn of mind, has not quite fathomed the nature of the reigning beauty of our little coterie. Being of a candid and affable nature herself, she fails to comprehend how the fangs of the green-eyed monster, once fastened in the tender heart of said beauty, make the said beauty so mortally uncomfy that she's bound to take it out on somebody—and who so natural or convenient as the critter who sicked the serpent on her."
"You mean that she is jealous of Elinor?" asked Patricia, opening her eyes very wide. "Why, Elinor is only a beginner, and she's studied abroad!"
"All the same, she sees that Kendall Major is about to snatch the laurel wreath from all our heads, and she doesn't want to do without any of her ornaments."
"But Elinor didn't even get a criticism in the head class yet," protested Patricia, unconvinced. "Mr. Benton didn't get around to her this morning, and she doesn't get any criticism in the night life till tomorrow afternoon. I don't see how she could be jealous."