“Well, perhaps you’re not the nicest, but you’ve got the longest eyelashes. It’s a good thing they aren’t as light as your hair, isn’t it?” “Well, I don’t know. Fives into—” “Yes, you do, you know you’d cry your eyes out if your winkers were as nearly white as your hair is. What do you do to make your eyelashes so long?” “Nothing. Now pay attention. You reduce thirty-three and a third to thirds and—” “Did your mother keep them cut when you were a baby?” “No, silly.” “I believe she did.” The next day Miss Bella appeared without eyelashes. Every individual hair snipped close to the lid. “I mean to have mine just like Miss Mar’s,” she told the group gathered about Hildegarde’s desk. “Hers are so immense they _trail_. I’m sure they must get awfully in the way sometimes.” “Then I wonder you run such a risk. You’d better have left yours as they were.” “Oh, if mine grow out as long as that, of course I shall plait them and tie them up with blue ribbons.” But it was not always admiration to which she treated her patron. She was once twitted quite groundlessly with feeling herself obliged to “mind” Miss Mar. “Yes,” she said, laughing a little wickedly. “I _must_, you see. She’s so massive. Just look at her shoulders. Look at her hips. Even her hair is massive. See what wobs it goes into.” This conversation took place in the cloak-room. “Everything about her is so big, it scares a little person like me. Look at that hat. You’d know it must belong to Miss Mar. If it was anybody else’s it would be a parasol. But you can tell it’s a hat because it’s got an elastic instead of a stick. And just look at the size of that elastic. Why, it’s as broad as my garter.” Now and then she would startle Hildegarde’s self-possession by an outburst of torrential affection. And so it came about that in spite of Bella’s blithe impertinence, Hildegarde even in those early days thought of her with sympathy as a lonely little being who was in reality very grateful for a big girl’s friendship. She would follow at Hildegarde’s heels like a pet dog, walk with her down to the gate every day after school, and invent one ingenious pretext after another to keep Hildegarde standing there a moment longer. Sometimes, when at last she said “good-by,” there was not regret alone but tears as well in Bella’s pretty eyes. “It must have been a little girl at boarding-school that found out Friday was an unlucky day,” she announced on one occasion. “It’s the miserablest, blackest day of the week. Yes it is, Miss Mar. It’s just hellish.” “Why, Bella Wayne! What _awful_ language.”