The at Long Lake Part 1 (2/2)
”I wonder where that nice boy that thrashed Jake Hoover is?” she asked Bessie, after they had been there for a while.
”Oh, that's whom you're looking for!” exclaimed Bessie, with a laugh. ”Will Burns, you mean? That's so, Dolly--he said he was coming here, didn't he?”
”He certainly did. I'd like to see him again, Bessie. He wasn't as stupid as most of country boys.”
”He was splendid,” said Bessie, warmly. ”If it hadn't been for him, I might not be here now, Dolly. Jake would have got me back into the other state--he was strong enough to make me go where he wanted. And if I'd been caught there, they'd have made me stay.”
”There he is now!” exclaimed Dolly, as a tall, sunburned boy appeared in the doorway. ”I was beginning to be afraid he wasn't coming at all.”
Will Burns, who was a cousin of Walter Stubbs, seemed to be well known to the young people of the neighborhood, though his home was near Jericho, some twenty miles away. He was greeted on all sides as he made his way through the Sunday School room, where the festival was being held, and it was some minutes before the girls from the farm saw that he was nearing them.
”Well--well, so you got home all right?” he said, smiling at Bessie. ”I thought you wouldn't have any more trouble, once you got on the train. I'm glad to see you again.”
And then Dolly's vanity got a rude shock. For Will Burns began to devote himself at once, after he had greeted Dolly and been introduced to Zara and some of the other girls, to Bessie. Everyone in the room soon noticed this, and since most of the girls there had tried to make him pay attention to them, at one time or another, his evident fondness for Bessie caused a little sensation. Dolly, so surprised to find a boy she fancied willing to talk to anyone else that she didn't know what to do, stood it as long as she could, and then went in search of Walter Stubbs, whom she had snubbed unmercifully all evening.
But Walter had at last plucked up courage enough to resent the way she treated him, and she found that he had bought two plates of ice-cream for Margery Burton and himself, and that they were sitting in a corner, eating their ice-cream, and talking away as merrily as if they had known one another all their lives!
Eleanor Mercer, who had come over to have an eye on the girls, saw the little comedy. She was sorry for Dolly, who was sensitive, but she knew that the lesson would be a wholesome one for the little flirt, who had been flattered so much by the boys in the city that she had come to believe that she could make any boy do just what she desired. So she said nothing, even when Dolly, without a single boy to keep her in countenance, was reduced to sitting with one or two other girls who were in the same predicament, since there were more girls there than boys.
Walter did not even come to get her to ride home with him. Instead, he found a place with Margery Burton, and Dolly had to climb into her wagon alone. There she found Bessie.
”You're a mean old thing, Bessie King!” she said, half crying.
CHAPTER II.
GOOD-BYE TO THE FARM.
Dolly had spoken in a low tone, her sobs seeming to strangle her speech, and only Bessie, who was amazed by this outburst, heard her. Grieved and astonished, she put her arm about Dolly, but the other girl threw it off, roughly.
”Don't you pretend you love me--I know the mean sort of a cat you are now!” she said bitterly.
”Why, Dolly! Whatever is the matter with, you? What have I done to make you angry?”
”If you were so mad at me the other day getting you into that automobile ride with Mr. Holmes you might have said so--instead of tending that you'd forgiven me, and then turning around and making everyone laugh at me to-night! You're prettier than I--and clever--but I think it's pretty mean to make that Burns boy spend the whole evening with you!”
Gradually, and very faintly, Bessie began to have a glimmering of what was wrong with her friend. She found it hard work not to smile, or even to laugh outright, but she resisted the temptation n.o.bly, for she knew only too well that to Dolly, sensitive and nervous, laughter would be just the one thing needed to make it harder than ever to patch up this senseless and silly quarrel, which, so far, was only one sided.
To Bessie, who thought little of boys, and to whom jealousy was alien, the idea that Dolly was really jealous of her seemed absurd, since she knew how little cause there was for such a feeling. But, very wisely, she determined to proceed slowly, and not to do anything that could possibly give Dolly any fresh cause of offence.
”Dolly,” she said, ”you mustn't feel that way. Really, dear, I didn't do that at all. I talked to him when he came to sit down by me, but that was all. I couldn't very well tell him to go away, or not answer him when he spoke to me, could I?”
”Oh, I know what you're going to say--that it was all his fault. But if you hadn't tried to make him come he wouldn't have done it.”
”I didn't try to make him come. Did you?”
Dolly stared at her a moment. The question seemed to force her to give attention to a new idea, to something she had not thought of before. But when she spoke her voice was still defiant.
”Suppose I did!” she said angrily. ”I wanted to have a good time--and he was the nicest boy there--”
”Maybe he saw that you were waiting for him too plainly, Dolly. Maybe he wanted to pick out someone for himself--and if you'd pretended that you didn't care whether he talked to you or not he would have been more anxious to be with you.”
Dolly blushed slightly at that, though it was too dark for Bessie to see the color in her cheeks. She knew very well that Bessie was right, but she wondered how Bessie knew it. That feigned indifference had brought her the attentions of more than one boy who had boasted that he was not going to pay any attention to her just because everyone else did.
But the gradually dawning suspicion that she might, after all, have only herself to blame for the spoiling of her evening's fun, and that she had acted in rather a silly fas.h.i.+on, didn't soften Dolly particularly. Very few people are able to recover a lost temper just because they find out, at the height of their anger, that they are themselves to blame for what made them angry, and Dolly was not yet one of them.
”I suppose you'll tell all the other girls about this,” she said. She wasn't crying any more, but her voice was as hard as ever. ”I think you're horrid--and I thought I was going to like you so much. I think I'll ask Miss Eleanor to let me share a room with someone else.”
Bessie didn't answer, though Dolly waited while the wagon drove on for quite a hundred yards. Bessie was thinking hard. She liked Dolly; she was sure that this was only a show of Dolly's temper, which, despite the restrictions that surrounded her in her home, and had a good deal to do with her mischievous ways, had never been properly curbed.
But, though Bessie was not angry in her turn, she understood thoroughly that if she and Dolly were to continue the friends.h.i.+p that had begun so promisingly, this trouble between them must be settled, and settled in the proper fas.h.i.+on. If Dolly were allowed to sleep on her anger, it would be infinitely harder to restore their relations to a friendly basis.
”I suppose you don't care!” said Dolly, finally, when she decided that Bessie was not going to answer her.
And now Bessie decided on a change of tactics. She had tried arguing with Dolly, and it had seemed to do no good at all. It was time to see if a little ridicule would not be more useful.
”I didn't say so, Dolly,” she answered, very quietly. And she smiled at her friend. ”What's the use of my saying anything? I told you the truth about what happened this evening, and you didn't believe me. So there's not much use talking, is there?”
”You know I'm right, or you'd have plenty to talk about,” said Dolly, unhappily. ”Oh, I wish we'd never seen Will Burns!”
”I wish we hadn't seen him until to-night, Dolly,” said Bessie, gravely. ”You know, that trip in the automobile with Mr. Holmes the other day wasn't very nice for me, Dolly. If they had caught me, as Mr. Holmes had planned to do, I'd have been taken back to Hedgeville, and bound over to Farmer Weeks--and he's a miser, who hates me, and would have been as mean to me as he could possibly be. That's how we met Will Burns, you know--because you insisted on going with Mr. Holmes in his car to get an ice-cream soda.”
”That's just what I said--you pretended to forgive me for that, and you haven't at all--you're still angry, and you humiliated me before all those people just to get even! I didn't think you were like that, Bessie--I thought you were nicer than I. But--”
”Dolly, stop talking a little, and just think it over. You say you didn't have a good time, and you mean that you didn't have a boy waiting around to do what you told him all evening. Isn't that so?”
”All the other girls had boys around them all the time--”
”You went with Walter Stubbs, didn't you? And you told him that maybe you'd come home with him and maybe you wouldn't--and that if anyone you liked better came along you were going to stay with them. You didn't know Will Burns was coming, did you?”
”No, but--I thought if he did come--”
”That's just it. You didn't think about Walter at all, did you. You wanted to have a good time yourself--and you didn't care what sort of a time he had! You just thought that if Will Burns did come he was sure to want to be with you, and so, as soon as you saw him come in you sent Walter off. Oh, you were silly, Dolly--and it was all your own fault. Don't you think it's rather mean to blame me? We were together when Will Burns was coming toward us, and I wanted to go away and let you stay there--but you said I must stay. Don't you remember that?”
Dolly, as a matter of fact, had quite forgotten it. But she remembered well enough, now that Bessie had reminded her of it. And, though she had a hot temper, and was fond of mischief, Dolly was not sly. She admitted it at once.
”I do remember it now, Bessie.”
”Well, don't you see how absurd it is to say that I took Will away from you? We were both there together--I couldn't tell when we saw him coming that he was going to talk to me, could I? And listen, Dolly--he asked me to go home with him in his buggy, and I said I wouldn't.”
With some girls that would have made the chance of mending things very remote. But Dolly, although her jealousy had been so quickly aroused, was not the sort to get still angrier at this fresh proof that she had been mistaken in thinking that Will Burns had liked her better than Bessie.
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