Elsie straightened up, adjusted her basket on her arm, and moved away. But Kate called after her, her voice shaking with anger, “I don’t know why you are so queer, Elsie Frazier, or why you haven’t friends. But while I’m visiting you it isn’t likely I’d play with people who won’t play with you, no matter how much they asked me. That’s that.”

Elsie turned and walked backward now. “Well, Kate Marshall, I’m afraid you’ll have just a horrid month then,” she prophesied. And with a strange, almost strangled little laugh she whirled about and was really off with her basket and shears.

Kate watched her as she went, floating toward the gardens across the smooth lawn. “She walks like a dryad,” she thought, “and she looks like a Dorothy Lathrop fairy.” Then she smiled a little woefully at her own fancy. “She may look like a fairy but she’s a horrid, stuck-up thing just the same,” she reminded herself.

But she found relief for her overcharged emotions when she came to the compositions of her letter to the Hart boys. There she described Elsie just as she was and had behaved. Not one unpleasant thing that Elsie had done was forgotten. Perhaps it was rather horrid of Kate to complain so unrestrainedly and set down so much criticism. But she did not give that a thought—not then. When the letter was finished and in its envelope she pulled it out again to add a postscript.

CONTENTS

P. S. It’s all true what I have told you about Elsie Frazier, every bit. But even so, I don’t hate her and now that I’ve written about her I’m not even angry any more. She’s hardly said a friendly word or acted a bit as you would expect her to to a guest, but even so if she only were nice to me I’d be quite crazy about her. That isn’t just because she’s so pretty, either. I don’t know why I feel that way, but I do. She’s exactly the sort of chum I’ve always imagined having some day. And there’s one thing good I can tell you about her. She likes “The King of the Fairies,” I think. Anyway, she owns it. So what do you make of it all? And what about the light in the orchard house? And why do you suppose Elsie is so set against my using the key? And why did she buy those groceries and take them up to her room? Don’t tell Mother a word I’ve told you about how mean Elsie is. She must think I’m having a lovely time—at least, until I know whether I can stick it out or not. K.M.

CHAPTER VIII KATE MEETS A DETECTIVE

CHAPTER VIII

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