had done nothing but talk about me and my incredible, my epic lunch.

As I drew the hat-pins from the admired new hat, I prepared for a hurricane of comments and questions.

None came. Not one of the girls seemed to have a word to say to me!

[68]

[68]

Perhaps they thought they would hear more by seeming not too eager. (That’s rather Miss Robinson’s style of “drawing out” her companions.)

Perhaps they considered the subject too vast for immediate discussion. Perhaps, for they are all good-natured girls, they had come to the conclusion that it wasn’t fair to “rag” me about it—that I might be feeling too utterly nervous and flurried over the unexpected (?) event.

They didn’t even ask me whether I had enjoyed myself! I even saw them, distinctly, avoid looking at me.

Only Miss Holt’s eyes seemed drawn, as if in spite of herself, to the flowers I was taking out of my coat to put in water in the grimy jam-jar on the dressing-table that so often holds Smithie’s bunch of violets; and it was Miss Holt who breathed an involuntary—

“I say, what lovely carnations!”

“Do have some,” I said, as a matter of course, dividing the cluster and holding out half to her.

“Oh, no. I wouldn’t deprive you for the world, Miss Trant,” murmured Miss Holt, stiffly drawing back.

I realized from her tone that she considered I had made a mistake.

Of course! Those flowers ought to have been thought “too precious” to share with anybody. Smithie would never think of giving one of her[69] “boy’s” violets away. Dear me, I thought, what an added bore, having to remember to keep up the correctly sentimental attitude about every trifle of this kind.... Ah!

[69]

I broke off what I was thinking at that moment with quite a sudden start.

For, just as she turned away, I had caught Miss Smith’s glance at that cluster of fresh, crimson 

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