“She never told me her troubles. I haven’t spoken ten minutes with her altogether. But I can see—and hear.”
“What?”
“That all the girls nod coldly when she passes; that none of them run up and make love to her, or—”
“Make love? Girls? What do you mean?”
“Don’t you see it all the time? Almost every girl in school is either on her knees in adoration of some other one, or is herself the adored one.”
“Mumps! You’re getting classy! Both in language and in the matter of observation.” Billy clapped his friend on the shoulder in true, young-mannish fashion, a caress that would have floored one less sturdy. “What do you hear?”
“Oh, scraps of conversation spoken between chums, yet to the world in general. You know how it is with a certain kind of rich girl, she talks loud, as if she owned the earth and wanted all to know it.”
“Not all the rich ones though. May Nell Smith is the richest girl in school, but you can’t call her loud.”
“Surely not. And there are others of course. Perhaps I should have said the girl who wishes to be thought rich, or those who haven’t been so very long.”