"Hello! Have a good time?" was her only greeting.
"Very. Did you like the play yesterday? I—I hope you understood why I—I mean after I had told you that I had to stay here——"
"Nancy, you know you don't have to explain anything to me. If you couldn't go with me, don't you suppose that I knew that you had your own reasons for not going?" interrupted Charlotte warmly. "My idea of real 'bosom friends,' as they call 'em, is of two people who know when not to bother each other with questions.
"The reason why most of these ardent school-girl friendships come to violent deaths is because they will insist on telling each other everything, and demanding an explanation for every why and wherefore. And that's that. Take off your things and have a peanut—or even two, if you like."
Nancy tossed her hat on the bed and began to take off her heavy clothes.
"You seemed sort of grave, Charlotte, when I came in. Has anything happened?" she asked, as she slipped into her dressing-gown and shook down her hair.
"Well, in a way, yes," replied Charlotte. "Nothing to worry you really, and it's really not my affair, except that it concerns you and Alma. It's only that I'm afraid that that donkey Mildred Lloyd got Alma into rather a scrape yesterday. Oh, don't look so scared—it's all fixed up. Only, if I were you, I'd have a good talk with Alma about Mildred."
"But what happened?" cried Nancy, who had turned quite pale, in spite of Charlotte's hasty reassurances.
"Well, the chief trouble was that they overstayed their time in town yesterday. Ten o'clock is the very latest that any of us can come in on a holiday, As you know, and as they knew, and as that little pinhead, Mademoiselle, knew. It seems that one of the boys persuaded them to stay in for dinner and to go to the theatre again afterwards. So they didn't get in until after twelve. Well, as you can imagine, Amelia went on a regular rampage. And I've a notion that she was a good deal harder on poor Alma than she was on Mildred. Amelia is more afraid of angering Mildred than Mildred is of angering her. Mildred always takes Mademoiselle as her chaperone because she is quite sure of being able to make that little poodle do anything she wants. And Mildred, being the daughter of Marshall Lloyd, is persona grata here, and can wriggle out of any scrape. I know Mildred down to the ground. I've roomed with her for a year. For some reason or other she never tried to coax me into any rule breaking—probably because we were never intimate at all, and because she knew that I don't think there's any fun or sense in that sort of thing. It doesn't take any great cleverness to break a rule, and you don't get anything much by doing so. If you want my opinion, I think that Mildred is a very unsafe sort of friend for a girl like Alma. I don't believe that Alma honestly likes her—Mildred is more than inclined to be a bully, and extremely capricious—but somehow a lot of girls feel flattered when Mildred 'takes them up,' and will do anything she tells them to, without using their own common sense for a minute. I'm saying all this to you, Nancy, when I wouldn't say it to anyone else. I don't like the idea of picking to pieces a girl whom you roomed with for a year, but I think that both of us ought to try to make Alma open her eyes before Mildred gets her into any more mischief."
Nancy sat silent for a time, staring out of the window, and biting her finger thoughtfully. She longed to ask Charlotte's advice, but she hesitated to discuss her own sister even with this very close and sincere friend. She hated to admit Alma's weaknesses even to herself, and she could not bring herself to speak of them to anyone else. But she felt very uncertain as to how she was going to approach Alma on the subject of her friendship with Mildred; for in spite of their reconciliation, she knew that Alma was not ready to take any warnings, without flying up with a lot of notions about the nobility of friendship and so on; true and idealistic notions in themselves, but so unwisely applied that she stood in danger of losing them altogether through disillusionment.