"I will go and tell Agnes Hilton about it this afternoon," she thought, and in the mean time she kept a sulky silence, equally proof against curiosity and sympathy.
Agnes was older than Katie, but they had been companions for years, and now, though Agnes was released from regular school routine, and was "finishing" comfortably with private masters, she still regarded Katie as her chief friend and adviser.
Agnes had a bad cold, and was nursing it in her room. A good talk over things with Katie Dawson was just what she liked. She was soon helping Katie to take off her Ulster and cap, and she noticed at once—as it was meant she should—Katie's look of anxious annoyance.
"What is the matter, dear?"
Then Katie drew a large comfortable chair opposite her friend's, and told her all about her school troubles.
"I never thought Clara May had any style at all," said Agnes, with the authority of sixteen.
"Still, the girls copy her, and she is so unbearably independent. I merely said that frizzes and curls were going out of fashion, and she said pretty things were always in fashion, and that even if they were not, they suited her, and she meant to wear them. Why, you know, Agnes love, if every one was to follow that rule, there would be absolutely no fashions at all. Then," added Katie, after an effective pause—"then she came to school in a velvet suit, and immediately the Smith girls and Cecile Bradley imitate her."
"Get one still handsomer."
"Mother won't hear of it—says it is ridiculous, and unsuitable, and all that. Of course mother can't feel as I do about it, though I remember very well that she would not have diamonds at all unless they were bigger than Aunt Jemima's."
"Could you not get her to buy you a velvet suit for church, and then contrive to wear it once to school, just to show it? For a general stand-point you could take your mother's argument—it sounds sensible."