"Where are my things?" asked Gertrude with natural curiosity and perhaps unnatural calm.

"Here," jerking the laundry bag, "it holds a lot--brushes, soap, nightgown, toothpowder, fountain-pen, note-book, everything. Berta carried your mending basket. You needn't bother one bit."

"I'll run back and forth for anything you want," volunteered Berta hastily at sight of an irritable frown on the usually serene brow of handsome Gertrude.

"You're cross!" commented Bea with a cheerful vivacity that was exasperating to the highest degree, considering that everybody ought to be worn down to an un.o.btrusive state of limp inertia after the three busy months just concluded, "you've been cross ever since Sara----"

"Berta, lend me your gossamer and rubbers, please," when Gertrude was unreasonably provoked she had a habit of snapping out her words even more clear-cut than usual. An instant later she swept forth into the rain only to stop short and hurry in again before the door had swung shut. "We might as well look at the study first," she said in a more gracious tone, "and we can draw lots to see who is to have the inside bedroom. I dare say the change to this building will be a rest."

Berta took quick survey from the window to explore the cause for this amazing wavering of purpose.

"Ah!" she murmured in swift enlightenment, "it's Sara. She's coming over the path."

A peculiar expression flitted across Bea's ingenuous face--an expression half quizzical, half sorry. "Then we'd better follow Gertrude's example, and clear the track. She'll cut us dead again--that meek little mouse of a girl! And I don't blame her for it either, so there!"

Berta tucked a pensive skip in between steps as they moved through the gloomy corridor past rain-beaten windows. "It wasn't like Gertrude to burst out like that just because Sara came late to our domestic evening, but it did spoil the fudges and the game and everything."

"And not to give her a chance to explain!" fumed Bea's temper always ready to flame over any injustice. "Before she could open her lips, Gertrude blazed up, cold as an icicle----"

"What?" interpolated demure Berta with her most deeply shocked accent, "an icicle blaze?"

"Oh, hush, you're the most disagreeable person! I wish Lila hadn't gone home. Well, she did just that. She said the artistic temperament was no excuse for discourteous falsehood--or she almost the same as said it--meaning breaking your word, you know, for Sara had promised she would come at eight, and there it was quarter to nine. She said that it might be wiser next time to invite somebody more reliable about keeping engagements. Sara did not answer a word--only went white as a sheet and walked out of the room. Now she even cuts us--because we were there--stares right over our heads when we meet her anywhere."

"I'm sure Gertrude was sorry the minute she had spoken. And she's been working awfully hard over committees and the maids' cla.s.ses and the last play. She was tired and nervous up to the brim, and then to wait and wait and wait for Sara. Why, I was getting cross myself."

"Well, why doesn't she beg Sara's pardon then, and make it all right?"

demanded the young judge severely. "Sara has always simply worshiped her, but because she never has made mistakes nor learned how to apologize, and everybody admires her and flatters her, she is too proud to say she was wrong. It's plain vanity--that's what it is. She can't bear to make herself do it."

"She's unhappy,--that's what I think, though she sort of pretends she doesn't care."

"She's cross as a bear--that's what I think," snapped Bea, "and Sarah has dark circles under her eyes. It's dreadful--those two girls who used to be inseparable! Quarrels are--are horrible!" The impetus of this conviction almost succeeded in hurling its proprietor against the water cooler at the bathroom door. "Say, Berta, what if you and I should quarrel, with Robbie Belle and Lila one thousand miles away?"

"I'm too amiable," responded Berta complacently, "sugar is sweet----"

The tin cup dropped with a flurried rattle against the fudge pan. "Oh!" a shriek of dismay, "my dear young and giddy friend, we're all out of sugar. What if we should want to make anything to-night? Let's run back to the grocery by the kitchen this minute."

Owing to this delay, Gertrude had been in the study for more than ten minutes, staring out at the trees writhing in the wind, when she was startled by the sound of a suffocated shriek, followed by a scamper of four thick-soled shoes, the heels smiting the corridor floor with disgracefully mannish force. The door flew inward vehemently, and Bea shot clear across the room to collapse in the farthest corner, hiding her face in the fudge pan while her shoulders quivered and heaved terrifyingly. Berta walked in behind her, and after one reproachful look, sat down carefully in a rocker and brushed her scarlet face before beginning to giggle helplessly.

"You're the meanest person! Beatrice Leigh, you knew I was turning into the wrong alleyway, but you never said a word. You wanted to see me disgraced. The door opened like magic, and there she stood as if she had slid through the keyhole. She stood there plastered against the wall and--and--regarded us----"

"Oh!" moaned Bea in ecstasy, one fiery ear and half a cheek emerging from the kindly shelter of the fudge pan, "she glared. She wondered why those two idiotic individuals were stalking toward her without a word or knock or smile, when suddenly the hinder one exploded and vanished, while the other ignominiously--stark, mute, inglorious--fled, ran, withdrew--so to speak----"

"Why didn't you say something?" groaned Berta. "I simply lost my wits from the surprise. She was the very last person I expected to see anywhere around here. How in the world did she happen to borrow the next room to ours? She'll think we were making fun of her--that we did it on purpose. She's awfully sensitive anyhow!"

"Well, you two are silly!" commented Gertrude, her face again toward the driving storm. "Who was it? Not a senior, I hope, or a faculty?"

Bea straightened herself abruptly, the laughter driven sternly out of every muscle except one little twitching dimple at the corner of her mouth. "It was Sara," she exclaimed, "and she is pale as a ghost. She has never been so strong since waking up on that boat and finding a burglar trying to steal the ring off her finger during the holidays. You know how she jumps at every sudden noise, and she's been getting thinner and thinner, and I think you ought to be ashamed of yourself clear down to the ground." Here the dimple vanished in earnest. "I know I'm ashamed of myself, and so's Berta. Even her lips were white. Now we've hurt her feelings worse. I didn't think. Nice big splendid excuse for a soph.o.m.ore, isn't it?"

"There's the gong for luncheon," was Gertrude's only reply as she moved toward the door.

Bea's flare of denunciation had subsided quickly in her characteristic manner. She sat absently nibbling the handle of the obliging pan, while staring after the receding figure, its girlish slenderness stiffened as if to warn away all friendliness. "She's stubborner than ever. I say, Berta, let's reconcile them."

"Oh, let's!" in echoing enthusiasm, adding as the beauty of the plan glowed brighter, "they'll probably thank us to the last day that they live. I know I would, if it were Robbie and I who were drifting farther and farther apart."

"Very likely," responded the arch-conspirator, beginning at the lower edge of the tin doubtless itself delicious from long a.s.sociation with dainties, "but the question is: How are we going to do it? One is proud, and the other is proud too. I don't see exactly how we can fix it."

As Berta did not see either, they decided with considerable sound sense meanwhile to go to luncheon. The next day after many minutes of discouraging meditation mingled with a few hours of tennis in the gymnasium, an idea came to them. While they rested on the window ledge, watching Gertrude stroll to and fro in the sunshine balmy at last, Bea began to waste her breath as usual.

"'To-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow drags out its weary course from day to day,'" she quoted with mindless cheerfulness, only to interrupt herself good naturedly, "say, Berta, do you realize that the third to-morrow aforementioned is April Fool's Day? I wish something interesting would happen. This is the most monotonous place in vacation."

"To-morrow never is, it always will be," corrected the carping critic.

Bea with indifference born of long endurance paid no attention. "I say!"

rapturously as the idea began to dawn upon her inward vision, "let's reconcile them with a joke."

"All right," agreed her partner with most charming alacrity, "what joke?"

The question was rather a poser, as Bea was inclined to take only one step at a time and utter one thought as it obligingly arrived, without anxiety about the next. This tendency had occasionally landed her high and dry on the sh.o.r.es of nothingness in the cla.s.sroom.

"Oh, um-m-m, I haven't determined that point yet. It isn't only great minds that move slowly." Gertrude's cape swung into view at the turn of the walk. "Berta, she looks awfully lonesome, doesn't she?"

"Well," argued the other, "n.o.body can expect us to do all the tagging around ourselves, especially where a contemporary is concerned. If she wants us to walk with her, she might omit a few snubs now and then. I'm tired of chasing after her."

"The trouble is that you are not a faithful friend, faithful friend,"

rattled Bea, "man's faithful friend, the dog. Oh, oh, oh, Berta, I have an idea!"

"n.o.ble girl!" Berta patted her on the head. "I generously refrain from comment."

"Thank you, sweetheart. I feared you could not deny yourself that remark about keeping my idea, as I might never get another. But this one is an idea about a dog. Let's find a puppy to give Gertrude for a soothing companion this vacation. I love puppies."

"The question is: does Gertrude also love puppies? Or is it a joke?"

"Let's get a dog and surprise her with it April Fool's morning. He will be such a friendly little fellow and so faithful that her conscience will sting her----"

"I must acknowledge that you are a humane, tender-hearted individual. To plot a stinging conscience----"

"Oh, hush, Berta! Do be nice and agreeable. I'm awfully tired this week, and I really need some distraction. The corridors stretch out empty and silent, and breakfast doesn't taste good at all, and--and I want to do something for Sara."

"Oh, all right!" Berta spied the glint of an excitable tear and shrugged the weight of common sense from her shoulders. "I'm with you."

Three days pa.s.sed--three days of blue sky and fluffy clouds and air that sent Bea dancing from end to end of the long stone wall while Berta stumped conceitedly along the path in her new rubber boots. Gertrude wondered aloud why two presumably intelligent young women insisted upon spending every morning in foolish journeys over muddy country roads.

Noting an unaccustomed accent of peevishness in the energetic voice, Berta began to worry a bit over the likelihood that such petulance was due to impending sickness. Bea jeered at this, though with covert side glances to detect any signs of fever. In her secret soul, where she hid the notions which she dimly felt looked best in the dark, she reflected that an attack of some mild disease might be a valuable form of retribution, and also afford the invalid leisure to repent of her sins.

Still she did not quite like to mention this thought aloud, as it seemed too unkindly vengeful with regard to any one so obviously miserable as Gertrude.

One day on charitable plans intent the two conspirators dragged Gertrude out across the brown fields to have fun building a bonfire, as they had done the previous spring. But somehow the expedition was not much of a success--possibly because the wood was too damp to burn inspiritingly. On that other occasion Sara had been with them, and had kept them laughing.

She could say the funniest things without stirring a muscle of her small solemn face. That stump speech of hers given from a genuine stump had sent them actually reeling home. This year--alas!--while returning to college rather silently, they saw Sara plodding toward them with an air of being out for sober exercise, not pleasure. The moment she spied them, she deliberately retraced her steps, and vanished through a hole in the hedge. This incident set Gertrude to chattering so excitedly about nothing in particular that the others knew she cared even more than they had fancied.

On the evening of the last day of March, Bea and Berta came rushing into the dining-room twenty minutes late for dinner. When they both declared that they did not want any soup--their favorite kind, too--Gertrude sighed impatiently over countermanding her order to the maid. It seemed as if she were not getting rested one bit this vacation, though she did nothing but read novels all day long. She felt sometimes as if she were hurrying every minute to escape from herself and her own thoughts.