One evening, as the latter was passing through the dining-hall, she found Evelyn, who studied where she chose, disconsolately running her fingers through her gold-brown hair.
“I say, Kiddy,” she called to Laura. “You know Latin, don’t you? Just give us a hand with this.”—Latin had not been one of Evelyn’s subjects, and she was now employing some of her spare time in studying the language with Mr. Strachey, who taught it after a fashion of his own. “How on earth would you say: ‘We had not however rid here so long, but should have tided it up the river’? What’s the old fool mean by that?” and she pushed an open volume of Robinson Crusoe towards Laura.
Laura helped to the best of her ability.
“Thanks awfully,” said Evelyn. “You’re a clever chickabiddy. But you must let me help you with something in return. What’s hardest?”
“Filling baths and papering rooms,” replied Laura candidly.
“Arithmetic, eh? Well, if ever you want a sum done, come to me.”
But Laura was temperamentally unable to accept so vague an invitation; and here the matter closed.
When, consequently, Miss Chapman summoned her one evening to tell her that she was to change her present bedroom for Evelyn’s, the news came as a great shock to her.
“Change my room?” she echoed, in slow disgust. “Oh, I can’t, Miss Chapman!”
“You’ve got to, Laura, if Mrs. Gurley says so,” expostulated the kindly governess.
“But I won’t! There must be some mistake. Just when I’m so comfortably settled, too. Very well, then, Miss Chapman, I’ll speak to Mrs. Gurley myself.”
She carried out this threat, and, for daring to question orders, received the soundest snubbing she had had for many a long day.
That night she was very bitter about it all, and the more so because Mary and Cupid did not, to her thinking, show sufficient sympathy.
“I believe you’re both glad I’m going. It’s a beastly shame. Why must I always be odd man out?”
“Look here, Infant, don’t adopt that tone, please,” said Cupid magisterially. “Or you’ll make us glad in earnest. People who are always up in arms about things are the greatest bores in the world.”
So the following afternoon Laura wryly took up armfuls of her belongings, mounted a storey higher, and deposited them on the second bed in Evelyn’s room.
The elder girl had had this room to herself for over a year now, and Laura felt sure would be chafing inwardly at her intrusion. For days she stole mousily in and out, avoiding the hours when Evelyn was there, getting up earlier in the morning, hurrying into bed at night and feeling very sore indeed at the sufferance on which she supposed herself to be.
But once Evelyn caught her and said: “Don’t, for gracious’ sake, knock each time you want to come in, child. This is your room now as well as mine.”
Laura reddened, and blurted out something about knowing how she must hate to have her stuck in there.
Evelyn wrinkled up her forehead and laughed. “What rot! Do you think I’d have asked to have you, if I hated it so much?”
“You asked to have me?” gasped Laura.
“Of course—didn’t you know? Old Gurley said I’d need to have someone; so I chose you.”
Laura was too dumbfounded, and too diffident, to ask the grounds of such a choice. But the knowledge that it was so, worked an instant change in her.
In all the three years she had been at school, she had not got beyond a surface friendliness with any of her fellows. Even those who had been her “chums” had wandered like shades through the groves of her affection: rough, teasing Bertha; pretty, lazy Inez; perky Tilly, slangily frank Maria and Kate, Mary and her moral influence, clever, instructive Cupid: to none of them had she been drawn by any deeper sense of affinity. And though she had come to believe, in the course of the last, more peaceful year, that she had grown used to being what you would call an unpopular girl—one, that is, with whom no one ever shared a confidence—yet seldom was there a child who longed more ardently to be liked, or suffered more acutely under dislike. Apart however from the brusque manner she had contracted, in her search after truth, it must be admitted that Laura had but a small talent for friendship; she did not grasp the constant give-and-take intimacy implies; the liking of others had to be brought to her, unsought, she, on the other hand, being free to stand back and consider whether or no the feeling was worth returning. And friends are not made in this fashion.
But Evelyn had stoutly, and without waiting for permission, crossed the barrier; and each new incident in her approach was pleasanter than the last. Laura was pleased, and flattered, and round the place where her heart was, she felt a warm and comfortable glow.
She began to return the liking, with interest, after the manner of a lonely, bottled-up child. And everything about Evelyn made it easy to grow fond of her. To begin with, Laura loved pretty things and pretty people; and her new friend was out and away the prettiest girl in the school. Then, too, she was clever, and that counted; you did not make a friend of a fool. But her chief characteristics were a certain sound common sense, and an inexhaustible fund of good-nature—a careless, happy, laughing sunniness, that was as grateful to those who came into touch with it as a rare ointment is grateful to the skin. This kindliness arose, it might be, in the first place from indolence: it was less trouble to be merry and amiable than to put oneself out to be selfish, which also meant standing a fire of disagreeable words and looks; and then, too, it was really hard for one
