“O, you don’t know my father and mother if they think something’s good for me!” Cathalina shook her head in some doubt. “But I’m sure they will admit that this plan to have me come here has turned out wonderfully! And _I_ would not have missed it for anything! Just _think_ of not knowing you girls!” Cathalina spoke earnestly and sincerely, but created a laugh and exclamations of “How awful!” “Neither would I,” said Helen,—“but look at Hilary and Lilian together again!” she exclaimed, pointing to where the two girls in question were walking up from the beach and swinging hands in the best of spirits. “That isn’t Hilary, is it?” demurred Eloise, looking around a tree. “Yes,—see her red tie and hair ribbon?” “Other girls have red ties and hair ribbons.” “That may be, but I know Hilary’s middy and her walk,” Helen assured the girls. “They’ve made up since the picnic, or, really, that day,” said Cathalina. “Haven’t you noticed them together?” asked Betty. “What was the matter, then, if they don’t mind our knowing. Hilary has not happened to be in the suite and we did not say one word to Lilian about it from the first.” “Hilary said I might tell you girls, or of course I would not say anything. It was all that Myrtle Wiseman. I couldn’t have supposed any girl could, _but I think she must have told lies_!” Cathalina’s voice dropped to a whisper on the last words, and her blue eyes widened in her earnestness, while the girls laughed out. “You know,” she apologized, “in polite society one hardly charges people with such things. I can’t remember all about it, but you know how Myrtle tried to go around with Hilary all the time. It seems that she was jealous of Lilian, and Lil told Hilary afterwards that she guessed she was jealous of Myrtle or she wouldn’t have been so taken in. And Myrtle told a lot of things and twisted what Hilary really did say, and Lil believed it and—” Cathalina was forced to stop and take breath. “She told Lilian that she wouldn’t think a girl would ‘stick in where she wasn’t wanted,’ that it was perfectly plain that Hilary was just being polite to her and that Hilary had said she didn’t care to be so intimate with one girl. She did not say it in just that way, but in little mean hints and sly ways. What Hilary did say was in answer to some question of Myrtle’s about our corridor crowd—that she thought it nice to have ever so many friends and not only one or two. “There were one or two thoughtless things that Hilary did just then and they seemed to prove what Myrtle said true. So Lilian was nearly killed over it, she said and just couldn’t act decent. What was the use of asking Hilary, she said, because Hilary was too kind to tell her the truth! So she was hoping that Hilary would ask about it, and Hilary was hurt and wondering what was the matter. “I knew that Myrtle was deceitful, for we’ve all seen her use a pony in Latin and copy in algebra,—but this was a regular scheme! It was simply—”