Frederica, in genuine relief from that moment of anxiety, was betrayed into reassuring truth-telling: "Mother says men don't like clever women." "If Aunt Bessie could hear H. M. talk about you she'd change her mind." Fred threw an impulsive arm about her and kissed her. "Oh, _Laura_!" she said. Laura laughed, and kissed her back again, and said if she didn't get out she'd fall asleep in her arms. But when Fred, blushing like any ordinary girl, had left her to those deferred slumbers, Laura Childs lay awake a long time.... Frederica, alone in her tiny room, had a very sober minute. As she thought it over, Laura's "loathing" did not seem quite convincing. "She's got something on her chest," Fred said. Even when they were little girls she had loved her cousin more than any one in the world, and to have Laura depressed disturbed her sharply. "_Can_ it be Jack?" she asked herself. "I wish Payton or Bobby would kick him!" That she should hand the infliction of such chastisement over to a brother showed that Fred could revert to the type she despised. But she was so troubled about Lolly that she almost forgot her satisfaction in being told--what she already knew!--that Howard appreciated her cleverness. CHAPTER XV Except for the Lakeville ladies, so looked down upon by Flora, Fred had very few visitors that summer. Even Laura did not come very often, though Lakeville was only five miles from Laketon. Perhaps she was afraid of being asked questions. In September both girls were invited by a school friend to come to the seashore for two or three weeks, but Laura waited to know that Fred had declined the invitation ("I can't fool with Society. I'm on my job!" said Fred) before she, Laura, accepted it. There was, however, one formal call which gave Frederica great joy; her grandmother and Miss Eliza Graham came over from the Laurels to see her--and she never behaved more outrageously! She told Mr. Weston afterward that she had had the time of her life joshing Mrs. Holmes. He assured her that she was an imp, but that he would gladly have paid the price of admission if he had only known that the circus was going to take place. He asked his cousin about it afterward, but her description of the scene was not so funny as Fred's. Indeed, it was rather pathetic--poor Freddy, fighting her grandmother, while Miss Eliza stood outside the ring, so to speak, and watched, pityingly. "For there's nothing one can do for her, Arthur," Miss Eliza told him; "she's got to get some very hard knocks before she'll give up advising the Creator how to manage His world." She and Mr. Weston had found a deserted spot on the veranda at the Laurels, and she told him what she thought of Freddy. "It's a sort of violent righteousness that possesses the child," she said. "Where does she come from, Arthur? That mother! That grandmother! She must be a foundling." "Her father had power. His righteousness was not very violent, but his temper was."