Angela was proud; she did not need such a hint more than once, but she was bewildered and hurt. She took stories to school to read at recess, or wandered into the drawing laboratory and touched up her designs. Miss Barrington thought her an unusually industrious student.
And then in the middle of the term Mary Hastings had come, a slender, well-bred girl of fifteen. She was rather stupid in her work, in fact she shone in nothing but French and good manners. Undeniably she had an air, and her accent was remarkable. The other pupils, giggling, produced certain uncouth and unheard of sounds, but Mary said in French: “No, I have lent my knife to the brother-in-law of the gardener but here is my cane,” quite as though the idiotic phrase were part of an imaginary conversation which she was conducting and appreciating. “She really knows what she’s talking about,” little Esther Bayliss commented, and added that Mary’s family had lost some money and they had had to send her to public school. But it was some time before this knowledge, dispensed by Esther with mysterious yet absolute authenticity, became generally known. Meanwhile Mary was left to her own devices while the class with complete but tacit unanimity “tried her out.” Mary, unaware of this, looked with her nearsighted, slightly supercilious gaze about the room at recess and seeing only one girl, and that girl Angela, who approached in dress, manner and deportment her own rather set ideas, had taken her lunch over to the other pupil’s desk and said: “Come on, let’s eat together while you tell me who everybody is.”
Angela took the invitation as simply as the other had offered. “That little girl in the purplish dress is Esther Bayliss and the tall one in the thick glasses—”
Mary, sitting with her back to the feeding groups, never troubled to look around. “I don’t mean the girls. I expect I’ll know them soon enough when I get around to it. I mean the teachers. Do you have to dig for them?” She liked Angela and she showed it plainly and directly. Her home was in some remote fastness of West Philadelphia which she could reach with comparative swiftness by taking the car at Spring Garden Street. Instead she walked halfway home with her new friend, up Seventeenth Street as far as Girard Avenue where, after a final exchange of school matters and farewells, she took the car, leaving Angela to her happy, satisfied thoughts. And presently she began to know more than happiness and satisfaction, she was knowing the extreme gratification of being the chosen companion of a popular and important girl, for Mary, although not quick at her studies, was a power in everything else. She dressed well, she had plenty of pocket money, she could play the latest marches in the gymnasium, she received a certain indefinable but flattering attention from the teachers, and she could make things “go.” The school paper was moribund and Mary knew how to resuscitate it; she brought in advertisements from her father’s business friends; she made her married sisters obtain subscriptions. Without being obtrusive or overbearing, without condescension and without toadying she was the leader of her class. And with it all she stuck to Angela. She accepted popularity because it was thrust upon her, but she was friendly with Angela because the latter suited her.
Angela was happy. She had a friend and the friendship brought her unexpected advantages. She was no longer left out of groups because there could be no class plans without Mary and Mary would remain nowhere for any length of time without Angela. So to save time and argument, and also to avoid offending the regent, Angela was always included. Not that she cared much about this, but she did like Mary; as is the way of a “fidus Achates,” she gave her friendship wholeheartedly. And it was gratifying to be in the midst of things.
In April the school magazine announced a new departure. Henceforth the editorial staff was to be composed of two representatives from each class; of these one was to be the chief representative chosen by vote of the class, the other was to be assistant, selected by the chief. The chief representative, said the announcement pompously, would sit in at executive meetings and have a voice in the policy of the paper. The assistant would solicit and collect subscriptions, collect fees, receive and report complaints and in brief, said Esther Bayliss, “do all the dirty work.” But she coveted the position and title for all that.
Angela’s class held a brief meeting after school and elected Mary Hastings as representative without a dissenting vote. “No,” said Angela holding up a last rather grimy bit of paper. “Here is one for Esther Bayliss.” Two or three of the girls giggled; everyone knew that she must have voted for herself; indeed it had been she who had insisted on taking a ballot rather than a vote by acclaim. Mary was already on her feet. She had been sure of the result of the election, would have been astonished indeed had it turned out any other way. “Well, girls,” she began in her rather high, refined voice, “I wish to thank you for the—er—confidence you have bestowed, that is, placed in me and I’m sure you all know I’ll do my best to keep the old paper going. And while I’m about it I might just as well announce that I’m choosing Angela Murray for my assistant.”
There was a moment’s silence. The girls who had thought about it at all had known that if Mary were elected, as assuredly she would be, this meant also the
