With Laura’s advent, however, a change came over the spirit of our dreams, and, to tell the truth, we are not over and above pleased with it. By the way, she spent last summer at the hotel, and you must have seen her, did you not? Anyway, Mrs. Burton and Aunt Truth were old school friends, and Bell has known Laura for two years, but they will never follow in their mothers’ footsteps. Laura is so different from her mother that I should never think they were relations; and she has managed to change all our arrangements in some mysterious way which we can’t understand. I get on very well with her; she positively showers favours upon me, and I more than half suspect it is because she thinks I don’t amount to much. As for the others, she rubs Polly the wrong way, and I believe she is a little bit jealous of Bell. You see, she is several months older than the rest of us, and has spent two winters in San Francisco, where she went out a great deal to parties and theatres, so that her ideas are entirely different from ours. She wants every single bit of attention—one boy to help her over the brooks, one to cut walking-sticks for her, another to peel her oranges, and another to read Spanish with her, and so on. Now, you know very well that she will never get all this so long as Bell Winship is in camp, for the boys think that Bell drags up the sun when she’s ready for him in the morning, and pushes him down at night when she happens to feel sleepy. We, who have known Bell always, cannot realise that any one can help loving her, but there is something in Laura which makes it impossible for her to see the right side of people. She told me this morning that she thought Bell had grown so vain and airy and self-conscious that it was painful to see her. I could not help being hurt; for you know what Bell is—brimful of nonsense and sparkle and bright speeches, but just as open as the day and as warm as the sunshine. If she could have been spoiled, we should have turned her head long ago; but she hasn’t a bit of silly vanity, and I never met any one before who didn’t see the pretty charm of her brightness and goodness—did you? And yet, somehow, Laura sticks needles into her every time she speaks. She feels them, too, but it only makes her quiet, for she is too proud and sensitive to resent it. I can see that she is different in her ways, as if she felt she was being criticised. Polly is quite the reverse. If anybody hurts her feelings she makes creation scream, and I admire her courage. Aunt Truth doesn’t know anything about all this, for Laura is a different girl when she is with her or Dr. Paul; not that she is deceitful, but that she is honestly anxious for their good opinion. You remember Aunt Truth’s hobby that we should never defend ourselves by attacking any one else, and none of us would ever complain, if we were hung, drawn, and quartered.