exclaimed Ida. "Why didn't you bring them? They would have been such an addition."
"Because I don't want any boy's pictuah stuck up on my dressing-table. I like to have them, because they've been my playmates always, and when we're grown up I'd like to remembah just how they looked, but that's no reason I want my walls plastahed with them now."
"What an original little thing you are, Princess," exclaimed Ida, with a laugh, which would have nettled Lloyd had not the compliment and the title taken away its sting. "Come into my room and see how my walls are plastered, as you call it."
Lloyd stared around in astonishment when Ida threw open her door. Boyish faces looked back at her from every side. Handsome ones, homely ones, in groups, in pairs, framed and unframed, strung together with ribbons, or stuck in behind Japanese fans. Added to all the other pictures of girls she had known in the three boarding-schools which she had attended, it gave the room the appearance of a photograph gallery.
"Well!" exclaimed Lloyd, at length, after a long, slow survey, "I don't see what you want them for." Unconsciously her head took the haughty uplift which Ida had admired.
"For the same reason that an Indian hangs up all the scalp-locks he takes, I suppose," drawled Ida, sweetly. "Of course, you're young yet. You don't understand. But you'll look at things differently when you are as near 'sweet sixteen' as I am, Princess."
Again that flattering title took the sting out of the patronizing manner which Lloyd otherwise would have resented. Was it only the afternoon before, she wondered, that she had cried out to the friendly old locusts her longing to be a child always?
As Ida crossed the room with a graceful sweep of long skirts, and settled her hat with its clusters of violets jauntily over her fluffy pompadour, there stole into the Little Colonel's heart, for the first time, a vague desire; a half-defined wish that she, too, were as near the borders of grown-up land as "sweet sixteen."
CHAPTER III
IDA'S SECRET
"Betty," said Lloyd, one morning, the third week of school, as she sat on the edge of her bed lacing her shoes, "you know that little glove-case you embroidered for my birthday present; would you feel hurt if I were to give it away?"
"No," answered Betty, slowly, turning from the mirror, brush in hand. "I made it to please you, and if you can find more pleasure in giving it away than in keeping it, I'd be glad for you to give it away."
"Honestly, Betty?"
"Yes, honestly." The brown eyes turned with truthful directness toward Lloyd.
"Oh, you are such a comfortable sort of person to live with, Betty Lewis," exclaimed the Little Colonel, with a sigh of relief. "Most girls would think that I didn't appreciate all those fine stitches you put into it, and didn't care for eithah the gift or the givah if I was willing to part with it; but I was suah you would undahstand. You see, the violets on it make it such a perfect match for everything on Ida's dressing-table, that it seems as if it ought to belong to her. I can't look at a violet now without thinking of her. She is so much like one, don't you think? Refined and sweet, and her eyes are such a dark blue, and have such a shy, appealing way of looking out from undah those long lashes. And have you evah noticed what delicious sachet she uses? So faint it's not much moah than the whispah of a smell, but there's always a touch of it about everything belonging to her. I call her Violet all the time now."
Only the mirror saw the bored expression that shaded Betty's face for an instant. For the last week, morning, noon, and night, she had heard nothing from Lloyd but Ida's praises. A sudden intimacy had sprung up between the two which threatened to eclipse all Lloyd's other friendships. Betty began brushing her hair vigorously. "Will you promise not to feel hurt if I give you a piece of advice?" she asked.
Lloyd nodded, lazily wondering what was coming, as she reached down to pick up her other shoe. She did not put it on, however, but sat with it in her hand, staring at Betty, scarcely believing that she heard aright, the advice was so different from anything she had expected.
"Then don't call her Violet before the other girls. And if I were in your place I don't believe I'd talk about her to them, quite as much as you do. You see," she hurried on, noticing the quick flush of displeasure on Lloyd's face, "I don't suppose you realize how much you do talk about her, or how you have changed lately. Last year you were good friends with all the girls, ready for any fun they proposed. They liked that independent, bossy little way you had of deciding things for them. That was one thing that made you so popular. But now you always wait to find out what Ida thinks, and what Ida wants, and they feel that you've not only dropped your old friends for a stranger whom you've known only three weeks, but that in some sort of a way – I can't explain it – you've dropped your old self too. Really, I believe that they are as jealous of the influence she has over you, as of the way she monopolizes you."
Betty did not see the gathering storm in the Little Colonel's face, and went serenely on brushing her hair. "You know she's so much older than you. They always smile so significantly when she calls you Princess, as if they thought she was doing it to flatter you. While they wouldn't say it openly to me, of course, I've heard them whispering among themselves that Ida had hoodooed you as she had Janie Clung, so that all you live for nowadays is to wait on her and buy her candy and violets."
Bang! went Lloyd's shoe against the wall. She had sent it spinning across the room with all her force. Betty, turning in dismay, saw that the advice which she had given with the kindest of motives, had aroused the Little Colonel's temper to white heat.
"The mean, hateful things!" she cried. "They've no right to talk about Ida that way! The idea of her stooping to such a thing as to flatter any one for what she could get out of them! It's an outrageous – "
"But Lloyd, dear," interrupted Betty. "Listen a minute. You promised that you wouldn't get mad, or I wouldn't have said a word."
"I'm not mad with you, but Mittie Dupong and some of the rest of them have been hateful to Ida from the very first." There was something like a sob in her voice. "And she's so alone in the world, too. She's told me things about her life that almost made me cry. Her aunt doesn't undahstand her at all, and she has a misa'ble time at home."
"But she needn't feel alone in the world here," insisted Betty. "Every girl in school would have been her friend, if she hadn't said at the start that she didn't care for anybody but us and the Walton girls. They'd be only too glad to take her in, even now, for the sake of having you back again. Oh, it was so much nicer last year."
Lloyd faced her indignantly. "Betty Lewis!" she exclaimed. "You're against her too, or you wouldn't say that."
"No, I'm not," insisted Betty. "I like her now just as much as I did the first day I saw her. I think she is sweet and lovable, and I don't wonder that you are very fond of her; but I must say that I'm sorry that she's in the school, for you don't seem to care for anything now but being with her, and that spoils all the good times we had planned to have."
Dead silence followed Betty's speech. The Little Colonel walked across the room, picked up her shoe and put it on, jerking the laces savagely. It was the first time that she had ever been angry with Betty, and her wrath was more than Betty could endure.
"Please don't feel hurt, Lloyd," she begged. "I can't bear to have you angry with me. I wouldn't have said a word, only I thought that if it was explained to you how we all felt, you'd be willing to spend a little more time with the others, and gradually they'd get interested in Ida and be nice to her for your sake, and things would go on as they used to, when we all had such good times together."
Again the painful silence, so deep that Betty felt as if a wall had risen between them.
"Please,
