"
"Harry Musgrave and I have known each other all our lives. And now you
and I are going to be friends."
"If you don't find somebody you like better, as Elise Finckel did. There
is the bell; it means dinner in ten minutes." Bessie was looking sorry
at her new comrade's suspicion. Janey was quick to see it. "Oh, I have
vexed you about Elise?" cried she in a voice of pleading distress. "When
shall I learn to trust anybody again?"
Bessie smiled superior. "Very soon, I hope," said she. "You must not
afflict yourself with fancies. I am not vexed; I am only sorry if you
won't trust me. Let us wait and see. I feel a kindness for most people,
and don't need to love one less because I love another more. I promise
to keep a warm place in my heart for you always, you little mite! I have
even taken to Miss Foster because I pity her. She looks so overworked,
and jaded, and poor."
"It is easy to like Miss Foster when you know her. She keeps her mamma,
and her salary is only twenty-five pounds a year."
The dinner, to which the girls adjourned at a second summons of the
bell, was as little appetizing as the breakfast had been. There was the
nauseous soup, a morsel of veal, a salad dressed with rank oil, a mess
of sweet curd, and a dish of stewed prunes. After the fiction of dining,
Miss Foster took the two pupils for a walk by the river, where groups of
soldiers under shade of the trees were practising the fife and the drum.
Pages:
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133