“Oh!” exclaimed Cordie, throwing her arms about Lucile and hiding her face in the folds of her dress. “I don’t want you to ask me questions. I don’t! I don’t! I just want to confess how mean I have been and what an unkind trick I have played on you.”
“Why Cordie!” Lucile consoled her. “You’ve not been mean to me at all. You—you’ve been the dearest kind of a little pal!”
“Oh, yes I have! I let you think I was a poor little girl from the country, when I wasn’t at all. I allowed you to spend money on me and pay all the room rent when I just knew you thought you were going to have to live on milk toast all next term of school. And I never even offered to do my share at all.
“But if you only knew,” she raced on, “how good it seemed to have one friend who wasn’t one bit selfish, who didn’t want a lot of things for herself and who was willing to do things for other people when she really needed just plain ordinary things for herself. If you only knew! If you only did!” Cordie’s voice rose shrill and high. She seemed about to burst into tears.
“There, there, dear little pal!” whispered Lucile. “I think I understand. But tell me, why did you take a job as wrapper when you really wasn’t poor and didn’t need the money?”
“Money!” laughed Cordie, now quite herself again. “I’ve never had to ask for any in my whole life! My father owns a third of that big store we worked in, and a lot besides.”
“But Dick?” said Lucile.
“I rode Dick on my father’s estate. It nearly broke my heart when they sold him. My father gave up his stables.”
“But you haven’t told me why you wanted to work in the store.”
“Well, you see that day, the first day you ever saw me, just for fun I had dressed up in plain old fashioned clothes and had gone downtown for a lark. Then I did that foolish fainting stunt. I really, truly fainted. And that man, that hawk-eyed man—” she shuddered, “must have recognized me. He must have known he could get a lot of money from father if only he could carry me away. Anyway he tried it and you—saved me!” She paused to give Lucile another hug.