Therewas a moment of silence broken only by the night sounds of the woods and the gentle lapping of the lake against the shore.
Then Edina Tooker drew a long, tremulous breath.
“It—sounds like—a fairy tale,” she said huskily. “Seems like I’d have to change a lot to have that happen.”
“So you will,” said Billie Bradley eagerly. She was beginning to warm to her plan as it took form in her mind. “Not in yourself, you understand, but in, well, in externals—like clothes, for instance.”
There! It was out! Even in the darkness Billie could guess at the hot flush that mantled the face of the girl from the West. As the silence continued and Edina sat with clenched hands, staring out toward the lake, Billie began to fear she had gone too far—that Edina’s fierce pride would resent the insinuation in her friendly suggestion.
In a moment, however, Edina’s quiet voice put her fears to rest.
“Everything about me’s wrong. Don’t you think I know that? All I need is eyes in my head to tell me I don’t stack up against these girls here with their purty clothes and their airs and graces. We’re a hundred—a thousand miles apart.”
“Would you like to be like them, Edina—look like them, I mean?”
For the first time the girl showed animation.
“Oh, would I just!” she breathed. “Would Ijust! But I don’t know how. I wouldn’t know where to start.”
“Well,Iwould,” said Billie. “I’ll guarantee to make you over into a perfect picture of the modern schoolgirl, Edina Tooker, as soon as—well, as soon as we can get a day off to do some shopping.”
“Would you help me?” asked Edina, in a stifled tone. “Wouldyou?”
“You’d be surprised,” Billie retorted gaily. “I hope you have some sort of indelible identification mark on you, Edina Tooker. Otherwise, when I get through with you, you won’t know yourself!”
There was no doubt but that the girl from Oklahoma, Billie’s “rough diamond,” was dazzled by the prospect.
“It don’t seem hardly possible, but if you could fix me up like you say, I’d be grateful to you all the rest of my life.”
“There’s only one condition,” said Billie severely; “and that is that you will agree to do exactly as I tellyou, that you will let me have my own way about everything. It’s the only way I can get results.”
“Done!” cried Edina, and reached out a big rough hand that almost crushed Billie’s little one in its grip. “You’re sure a good sport and I’m sorry for the way I—I talked to you before.”
“That’s all right.” Billie began to gather up the remnants of the basket lunch. “We’d best be getting back to the Hall or they will be sending out a posse in search of us. Besides, I promised Vi I’d help her with her math.”
As the two girls approached the Hall, Edina walking close to Billie, her eyes downcast and sullen, they found that the school grounds were almost deserted.
The groups of girls had broken up and scattered indoors, most of them for study, some few of them for reading or other diversions, some merely to enjoy that half hour or so of school gossip they all found so enjoyable.
Billie found that a few of her friends still lingered in the grounds. Laura and Vi with Connie Danvers and Ray Carew were discussing the tennis tournament which was to be an exciting feature of the fall term.
These girls turned interested and speculative eyes toward Billie and her companion.
Edina would have avoided Billie’s friends. She murmured something under her breath about having to get back to her dormitory; but Billie seized herhand and drew her on toward the group of amused and interested girls.
“You promised you’d do as I say,” she reminded her companion. “And the first thing you’ve got to learn is never to run away from any situation. You’ve got to square your chin and look it straight in the eye.”
Billie marched straight up to her friends, Edina’s big, rough hand clenched tightly in her own.
“Girls,” she said, in her forthright fashion, “Edina Tooker and I have decided to be friends. We are going to be the best of pals from now on. And I am depending upon all my friends to be nice to her.”
There was a brief, uncomfortable silence. The girls did not like Edina Tooker. Nevertheless, they knew that if Billie took her up, sooner or later they would all be forced to accept her. Not too graciously, they bowed to the inevitable.
“Anything you say goes with me, Billie,” Laura observed.
“Me, too,” said Vi.
“Welcome to the fold, Edina,” drawled Ray Carew.
“We welcome you as one of ourselves,” added Connie, the sarcasm behind her words not too well disguised.
“I knew you would,” said Billie sweetly, wanting, privately, to slap them all. To her new protégé shesaid: “It’s only Tuesday, Edina. We will have to wait until Saturday, I guess, to get a day off and carry out our plans. Remember, we are going to make them all sit up and take notice. Until then, don’t forget our bargain.”
“I won’t,” returned Edina. She released her hand from Billie’s and without so much as a good-by to the other girls made her way through the beautiful grounds toward the first-year dormitories. In that beautiful setting, she looked grotesque enough, as much out of place as the proverbial bull in the china shop.
“Well, I see you’ve gone and done it, Billie,” sighed Vi. “I was afraid you would. But it’s no use. You can’t tame that girl.”
“Like making friends with a lion cub,” observed Laura. “You never can tell when it will turn and rend you with its fangs. That sounds a bit far-fetched, but I guess you catch my meaning.”
Billie shook her head.
“You’re dead wrong, all of you. Edina isn’t a bit like that. She is headstrong and untamed, I’ll admit; but at heart she’s very much like the rest of us, wanting what we want and desperately anxious for an education.”
Ray Carew’s mocking laugh floated on the darkness.
“I hadn’t an idea you were so credulous, Billie. The girl is nothing but a savage. If you try to helpthat sort of person you will only get your trouble for your pains. I’m warning you.”
It was being slowly borne in upon Billie Bradley that she was alone in her championship of the strange, lonely girl from Oklahoma. Her friends, the girls upon whom she depended for understanding and support in what she had come to regard as an interesting and even exciting experiment, were subtly, but none the less decidedly, ranging themselves against her.
She turned to Connie Danvers.
“Do you feel that way about it, too, Connie?” she asked.
“I’m willing to be nice to anybody, if you say so, Billie. But I can’t help thinking you are making a mistake, taking up this freak girl from Oklahoma. It seems to me you are letting yourself in for a heap of trouble.”
“You feel that way about it, too, Vi?”
“’Fraid I do, Billie. Though I’ll try to be nice to her, if you say so.”
“And you, Laura?”
“You will never be able to make anything of that sort of girl, Billie. She has nothing in common with the rest of us. If you try to take her up, you will be only wasting your time. I feel sure of it.”
Billie was silent for a moment. She was troubled and hurt, but the defection of her friends in no wisealtered her determination to help the strange, wild, half-tamed girl from Oklahoma.
“Very well,” she said quietly. “I am glad to know how you all stand, anyway. From now on, it will be my business to prove you wrong!”
As Billie limped up the gravel path alone, there was a curious weight upon her spirit. The disapproval of her friends was a new experience to her. Even Vi and Laura had deserted.
“I’ll show them I can make something of Edina Tooker!” she told herself. “I’ll make them admit it! I’ve got to now, to justify myself.”