"It is strange," she said, "that I can never get Priscilla to accept anything from me. 'Pride goeth before destruction,' and that will be the way with Priscilla. Something will surely happen to her if she keeps on like this." In the early summer, a few months before, Priscilla and Martine had first become really acquainted, when as travelling companions they made a journey with Amy and her mother. For some time the two seemed far from congenial; each looked at life from a very different standpoint. Priscilla, brought up rather strictly and economically, prided herself, perhaps unduly, on her unworldliness, and found it hard to understand the extravagant, fun-loving Martine. But each girl at last accepted the other's good qualities, and before they had left Canadian soil the two had begun to be good friends. When Martine's plans were finally settled, Priscilla was delighted that she and the young Chicagoan were to be at the same school. Now Priscilla, although for a long time she had spent several weeks of each year in Boston with her aunt, Mrs. Tilworth, had made few friends among the girls of her own age whose parents her mother or her aunt knew. Her natural shyness stood in her way when they came to call on her, and when she returned their calls she progressed no further. Often she was invited to their parties, and when she could not escape it, she accepted their invitations. Though she took part in their games in a quiet way, no one paid much attention to the pale little girl who always seemed ill at ease. One awful day Mrs. Tilworth decided that she must give a party for Priscilla; in vain Priscilla protested that she hated parties. The invitations were written and sent out, and on the appointed afternoon Priscilla, in a ruffled muslin gown, had to stand beside her aunt to receive her guests. When she had safely passed through this ordeal she slipped away to a corner, where she sat for a while looking on. When she found that no one tried to draw her out, she managed to slip still farther away. "They don't need me," she murmured. Later, when they looked for her, that she might take her place at the head of the table--for it was a children's party, with a sit-down supper at six o'clock--there was a great uproar when she could not be found. At last two or three of the children went to Priscilla's room, and entering without knocking, they saw her seated in an easy-chair by the droplight on the little centre table. She was so engrossed in the book she was reading that at first she did not hear them, and when one of them snatched the volume out of her hand to read the title, they discovered that it was a little history of Mary Queen of Scots. "Those children tired me," she explained later to her aunt. "They played so hard, and I just thought I'd go upstairs and read for a while."