"And she didn't make any objection to going with you?"

"No, not the slightest. Indeed she seemed glad to go with us."

Hope flushed a little, as she said this in answer to Kate's question that night, as the two sat talking over the day and its exciting events. The flush was the result of that pang of tender conscience that springs up in revolt at even a momentary want of candor.

"And Ray Armitage,—how did he take it?"

"Oh, quite easily!"

"And you didn't have—either you or Mrs. Sibley—to argue with her; you didn't have to tell her that the only thing to save her from the consequences of her silliness was to go home in a proper way under proper chaperonage?"

"No, we didn't have to knock her down with that bludgeon," laughed Hope.

"Well, I suppose she had begun to think! I'm glad she had so much sense. Schuyler made all manner of fun of me after you and Mrs. Sibley left. He said, in the first place, that he didn't believe you'd be in time to see them before they entered the theatre, and if you did, you wouldn't stop them."

"Mrs. Sibley was of the same opinion exactly."

"How clever it was of her to do the next thing,—take you into the theatre, and then manage the whole thing so perfectly!"

"Yes, wasn't it clever, and so kind."

"When you drove up did you see any of the teachers?"

"We met Miss Stephens as we entered the hall."

"You don't mean it? What did she say at seeing Dorothea with you?"

"Mrs. Sibley came in with us for a moment, and Miss Stephens looked at the three of us with some surprise, and then said,—

"'I thought Dorothea was coming home long ago under the escort of Bessie Armitage and her brother.'

"At that, Mrs. Sibley answered at once, 'We met Dorothea, and took her with us.'

"Oh! and when Miss Stephens saw Mrs. Sibley and heard her say that, she felt that everything was all right, I suppose. She ought to have been sure of that before, and then you wouldn't have lost your afternoon's skating, and had such a lot of bother."

"Oh, well, it's all turned out satisfactorily."

Hope couldn't tell Kate how satisfactorily,—couldn't tell her that if Miss Stephens had been sure that everything was right at an earlier hour and Dorothea had thus been hindered from doing what she did, she would also have missed that mortifying experience, that might do more to shake her unlimited confidence in her own estimates and opinions than anything else could possibly do.

No, Hope couldn't tell Kate of this, for her lips were sealed. But if she could not express herself freely in this direction, she could, and she would, say something to show Dorothea as she had just seen her,—at her best; and so she held forth, with what amplitude was possible within the limit of her promise, on the girl's surprising gentleness and reasonableness. Dorothea had really behaved exceedingly well, she told Kate, and was not only appreciative of what had been done for her, but of the good intention that prompted the doing. And here Hope could not help repeating this characteristic speech of Dorothea's,—

"I don't half believe, and I never have, that such dreadful consequences would come of going against Miss Marr's rules; but you do, I see, and so it was awfully kind of you to take all this trouble to pull me out of the danger you thought I was in."

"She said that? Well, I must say, she's got more sense and feeling than I gave her credit for; and to think of her flying at me as she did. My intentions were as good as yours."

"Yes, but you gave her advice, and she hates advice. What seemed to impress her was our—Mrs. Sibley and my—taking the trouble to leave the Park, and actually going in to the matinÉe and waiting to do her the service we did."

"Well, I hope her gratitude and appreciation will last long enough to keep her out of any more silly scrapes for a while."

"I don't believe she will want to get into any more such scrapes. I—I think she feels sort of ashamed of what she has done. And, Kate, couldn't we—wouldn't it be a good plan if we tried to help her to keep out of such things?"

"Help her—how?"

"Well, I—I feel as if I may have been too hard on her. I have cherished my feeling of dislike constantly, and have done her an injury all round—with you, and the other girls by the way I have held off from her. She feels that the girls don't like her, and thinks that you were the first to dislike her, and that it was you who had influenced me. I told her what a mistake that was,—that it was I who had influenced you—by my manner at the start; and then, then I recalled myself to her mind. I told her what she had forgotten,—that I was the little girl she had met five years ago,—the little girl she had had a quarrel with at the Brookside station, and that I had always remembered what she had said to me there,—always remembered and resented it, and that it was that that had affected my manner towards her, had made me stiff and offish to her."

"Oh, Hope, do, do tell me about that time! I've never liked before to urge you to tell me the whole story, but I wish now that you would tell me."

There was a moment of hesitation,—just a moment; then with a little rising of color, a little tremulousness of voice, Hope said,—

"Kate, do you remember that piece of music that I brought back from Boston,—that 'Idyl of the Spring' that Mr. Kolb had composed for me to play at our coming May festival?"

"That piece dedicated to you, and so oddly named 'Mayflowers: Ten Cents a Bunch'?"

"Yes, and do you remember, when you asked me how he came to give it such an odd title, that I told you he had known a little girl once that he was very fond of, who had sold mayflowers at ten cents a bunch?"

"Yes."

"Well, I was that little girl."

"You! you! When—where—how did you come to sell them?"

"I'll tell you;" and then, for the second time that night, Hope told her story of that 'poor time,' as Dorothea had blunderingly called it,—that dear time, as she herself rightly and happily called it,—when she lived with her father and mother in the little cottage at Riverview, and carried out her joyous plan of earning that wonderful twenty-five dollars to buy the good little fiddle. As she told the story now, as she went back to the details of her plan, with Kate for audience, and described the little fiddle in the shop-window as she had first seen it, and the sinking of her heart as she was told the price, and then the happy relief of her inspiration when she heard the boy on the street call out "Ten cents a bunch," she began to lose her shyness in the warmth of her recollection,—to lose her shyness and to forget her shrinking from a possible auditor who wouldn't understand. Wouldn't understand! As she neared the end, as she came to her meeting with Dorothea in the Brookside station, and said, "It was there that I first met Dorothea," Kate burst in,—

"And she insulted you, she insulted you in her ignorance and stupidity! I can see it all,—all. She couldn't comprehend such a dear darling brave little thing as you. She took you for an ordinary little street huckster,—the horrid thick-headed, thick-skinned creature,—and sneered and jeered at you, and very likely called you names, or did other dreadful things."

"Oh, no, no, Kate! she wasn't malicious. She didn't mean to hurt me; but she was ignorant of any way of living but her own way, and she thought that anybody who sold things on the street must be one of those very poor people who lived anyhow, like the people at the North End, and so she asked me questions,—questions that hurt me, because they showed that she thought I was so different from herself. No, it wasn't malice that made her ask these questions, it was simply ignorance; and I—I told her so at last."

"You did? Hurrah! Tell me—tell me exactly what you said," cried Kate, laughing delightedly.

"Well, I said exactly that,—that she must be very ignorant or she would know more about the difference in people, that she would see the difference; and then I told her that my father was an engineer on the road, and that we had a nice home and plenty to eat and to drink and to wear, and books and magazines and papers, and then she asked me what I sold flowers on the street for, if we were as nice as that, and I told her that I wanted to buy something for myself that my father couldn't afford to buy for me; and then I remember"—and a little dimpling smile came over Hope's face here—"I asked her, 'Don't you ever want anything that your father doesn't feel as if he could buy for you just when you want him to?' and she was so irritated at my accusing her of being ignorant that she answered, 'Well, if I did, I shouldn't be let to go out on the street and peddle flowers to earn the money.'"

"The hateful, impudent—"

"But wait, wait! I was as bad as she was here, because I answered back, 'And I shouldn't be allowed to say "let to go," like ignorant North Enders.'"

"Oh, Hope, Hope, this is beautiful, beautiful!" and Kate began to dance wildly around the room, thrumming an imaginary pair of castanets as she danced.

"I don't think it was very beautiful," protested Hope; "but you can see by this speech that I was as bad as she after I got my temper up."

"Bad! it was beautiful, beautiful,—just the best thing I ever heard. Bad! well, I should say not."

"But she didn't mean to hurt me, to begin with, and I—I meant to hurt her in everything I said. Remember that."

"You meant to enlighten her, and I fancy you did, and you certainly got the better of her."

"Yes, and her father told her so, she said, when I recalled the 'scrimmage,' as she termed it, to her mind; and yet in spite of that she didn't lay up anything against me. She had forgotten my face, and was fast forgetting the whole affair when I brought things back to her. She had never had a bit of grudge against me, and she only laughed when she recalled some of the things I had said. I'm glad now to tell you the whole story, for you must see by what I have told you, that she isn't in the least malicious, and you must see, too, that she is really much better natured than we have thought her, not to have laid up anything; yes, much better natured than I am."

"Well, she was the attacking party. You were only on the defensive, and you knocked her down with the truth. Of course you would remember the kind of things she said to you more than she would remember your replies; and then you are much finer and more sensitive than she, anyway. But I will allow that she has turned out better in the end than I would have expected. That telling you what her father said wasn't bad. But, Hope dear, sensitive as you are, how could you recall yourself and that old time to her?"

"I told you how I came to do it; it was because she had got it into her head that it was you who had made me stiff and offish, and I had to tell her then just how it was."

"Oh, yes; and you sacrificed yourself in that way for me. You hated to tell her, Hope, I know you did,—you are such a sensitive, shrinking creature."

"Yes, that is just my fault,—a cowardly shrinking, that makes me keep silent sometimes when I ought to speak. Oh, Kate, Kate, I dare say now, this minute, you are thinking how strange it is,—my not having spoken to you before, of all this old life of mine, when I lived so differently from the way I live now. I dare say you think I—I was ashamed to talk about it, because my father was a working-man, a poor locomotive engineer. Oh, I shall never forget how I felt that day last term when you talked about the people who kept still and never spoke of their humble beginnings; and when you brought up the Stephensons and said, 'Do you think they'd keep still, because they were ashamed of their humble beginnings, after they had worked out of them and become prosperous?' and then when you went on and declared how you hated the cowardice of those people who didn't dare to speak of these things, and what you would do under such circumstances, I felt that I was the most miserable coward, and that you would despise me forever if you knew what I was keeping to myself. But I knew—I knew all the time, that I wasn't ashamed of anything,—of the little home without a servant or of the engine-cab and my dear, dear father. I knew I was proud of him and what he had done, and yet I knew that I couldn't bear to think of telling all these things to girls who had never known what it was to live as we had. I felt that you wouldn't, that you couldn't understand; that you would take it all something as Dorothea had, years ago, though you wouldn't say a word of how you felt, but you would look it. You would stare at me with wonder and curiosity,—that you—you—"

"Oh, Hope, Hope, my dear, I do understand it all—all—everything. I know that you couldn't be ashamed of that old time, and I understand just how you felt about us, how and why you shrank from telling us. One such experience as that with Dorothea was enough to make you shrink from all girls like us. You were a dear delicate little child, and you had never known that there was such ignorance as Dorothea's, and that you could be so misunderstood, and it has made a great bruise on you that you have never got over. Oh, Hope, this is all Dorothea's doing. She meant no harm, but she has done the harm nevertheless, for she has taken away your belief and trust and confidence. To think that you couldn't trust me, after all you've known of me, to understand just a difference in the way of living! Why, the life you've just told me of—that little home where you were so close to each other, where you lived so near to all your father's hopes and plans—seems to me beautiful, something to be envied. And to think you should think I shouldn't understand, shouldn't appreciate it—should look at it with—with such eyes as—as Dorothea's! Oh, Hope! Hope! doesn't this prove what harm Dorothea has done you?"

"And if it does, Kate, and I don't deny that it does, I say again that she didn't mean to do any harm,—I see that now as clear as can be,—and that ought to make all the difference; and then when I think what I have done—"

"You! what have you done but to forgive her ninety-and-nine times?"

"Oh, no, no, Kate, I've—I've dis—no, I've hated her all these years, and this hate has affected my manner towards her so much that it influenced you and all the other girls against her; and as she has been harmed through that, I don't see but that I ought to cry quits."

"Yes, five months against five years. Do you call that quits?"

"Yes, and maybe more than quits, because I've made enemies for her, or at least influenced people against her, while she had no feeling to prejudice people against me. She has liked me all this time that we've been here at school together, spite of my being so stiff; and when she came to find out who I was,—the little girl who got the best of her in that childish quarrel, she hadn't the least ill will towards me. Quits? Yes, I say it's more than quits for me. Oh, Kate, I can't tell you everything she said to me just now, but she did show herself generous and grateful; and even when I confessed that it was I who had prejudiced you, even then she had no ill will. Yes, yes, I agree that I was harmed and hurt by what happened five years ago; but, Kate, I've been thinking very fast and very hard for the last hour or two, and I've come to believe that if I had known nothing of Dorothea before she came here—if I and you had started without any prejudice, things might have been different, we might have been easier and pleasanter with her, and that might have brought her out in pleasanter ways. But instead of that, we picked up every little thing, and, well, she was cold-shouldered awfully by all of us at times; and we can't tell—we don't know what we might have done, if we had tried to make her one of us more. We might have kept her from doing such foolish reckless things as she has; and so, as I think that I am to blame for the beginning of this prejudice that has hurt her, I think that I may have been the means of doing her greater harm than she has ever done me; for think, think, Kate, what harm it must be to a girl to have Raymond Armitage able to boast about her accepting his attentions, and for your brother and Peter Van Loon, and nobody knows who else, getting such a cheap opinion of her through these things."

"Yes, I see. But what do you propose to do about it?"

"Well, I think—I ought to do or try to do what I can now, to help her not to hurt herself any more by these pranks."

"How are you going to work to make her over like this?"

"I—I don't expect to make her over, Kate, but I think she may get a different idea of having a good time if we are very friendly to her, and bring her into our good times, and she sees that the girls, and the boys too, that she really wants to associate with, really and truly look down on these pranks that she has thought were only 'good fun,'—look down upon them and think them vulgar."

"And you want me to help in this missionary work?" asked Kate, half laughing.

"Yes, I—I want you to be nice to her, Kate. When you meet her to-morrow morning, now, I want you to give her something more than a stiff nod; I want you to smile a little,—not too much, or she'll think I've been talking to you about her."

"A little, but not too much," laughed Kate, "Oh, Hope, Hope, you dear delightful darling you, this is too funny, too funny!"

"But won't you try—won't you try, Kate, to—"

"To smile upon her a little but not too much? Yes, yes, I'll try, I'll try," still laughing.

"And, Kate dear," suddenly enfolding the laughing girl in a close embrace, "will you try to do something else for me,—will you try to forgive me for—for being so stupid as not to trust you to—to understand? Will you try to forgive me, and to—to love me as well—as you did before?"

"Try to forgive you—to love you as well as I did before," cried Kate, pressing Hope's cheek against her own. "I've nothing to forgive; and as for loving you as well as I did before, I love you better, if that were possible, for before, though I thought I knew you pretty well, I didn't know how more than generous you could be. Love you? I love and admire you beyond anybody; I—"

"Girls, girls, it's after talking hours," whispered Anna Fleming, as she pushed open the door. "I've just come from your room, Hope, where I've been with Myra, and the lights are all being turned down in the halls, and so we must say good-night and scatter to bed."

"Oh, yes, I ought not to have stayed so long," whispered back Hope, apologetically. "Good-night!" and "Good-night!" "Good-night" responded Anna and Kate in chorus; but Kate managed to add slyly in a lower whisper to Hope,—

"I'll smile upon her a little, but not too much, Hope dear."