"And may I--will you let me come with you?" in a whisper, and clutching Hope's wrist nervously.

"Yes, oh, yes; I was going to ask you if you wouldn't like to come with us."

"Were you?" A quick glance at Hope from the black eyes still struggling against tears, a closer clutch upon Hope's wrist, then a sudden conquering of the quivering lips, and, "I needn't keep you waiting any longer, I have found friends who will take me home," Mr. Raymond Armitage was told with a dignity that surprised and rather abashed him.

Hope, too, was surprised at the real dignity displayed, and slid her hand into the hand that was clutching her wrist, with a sudden movement of approbation and sympathy. Dorothea gave a quick start, and turned an inquiring look upon Hope's face at this movement,--a look that seemed to ask, "Do you really feel like this toward me?"

With wise forethought, Mrs. Sibley, on leaving the Park, had directed her coachman, who was awaiting her with the carriage at that point to drive round to the theatre and await her there. If he did not find her ready for him at once, he was to return at four o'clock. She had thus provided for either result of her expedition. If the elevated, swift though it was, did not enable them to reach the theatre in time to interview Dorothea as she arrived, the carriage would be on hand at four to take her back with them after the play, for Mrs. Sibley had no manner of doubt from the first that the girl would go with them, though she little thought it would be under the present conditions.

Indeed, she had looked forward to a very different state of things; and sure though she felt of ultimate success, she fully expected to bring it about by adroit management. Instead of this, however, here was this difficult-to-be-dealt-with Dorothea not only willing, but gratefully glad, to avail herself of the opportunity offered her.

CHAPTER XXI.

"And you mean that you _won't_ tell her about Ray Armitage's rudeness?"

"No, I won't tell her if you feel like this,--if you don't want me to tell her."

"Of course I don't want you to, but of course I expected that you _would_ tell her; she's such a chum of yours. I know it would have been the first thing _I_ should have done with a chum of mine."

"Well, _I_ should have spoken of it to Kate, naturally, but for your feeling; and she would have been very nice about it, just as indignant and disgusted with him as I am."

"Perhaps so; but she's tried to do me good and failed too much to be very sorry for anything that would mortify me; and I _know_ if she heard of this rudeness to me, she'd think it served me right,--would teach me a lesson."

Hope couldn't help laughing a little at this. Then she said suddenly, "How do you know that I don't feel just the same?"

"Oh, I know you don't exactly approve of me; but you haven't cut me up as she has, and then tried to set me right in that superior way; and you haven't meddled with me or my affairs."

"You don't know what I have done. You took it for granted that I happened to go to the theatre with Mrs. Sibley to please myself, that I happened to be behind you, and so happened to hear your talk with Raymond Armitage. But I _didn't_ go there to please myself. I went there on purpose to--to meddle with you and your affairs!"

"What in the world _do_ you mean?"

"I'll tell you." And then and there Hope told the whole story of her meddling, and why she did it,--the whole story, from the moment she had observed Dorothea leaving the Park with Raymond Armitage to her own departure with Mrs. Sibley; and this, of course, included the consultation with Kate, and the information regarding Raymond Armitage's movements that was wrung from Schuyler Van der Berg. As she neared the end of this story, Hope rose from her chair. Dorothea would not now desire her presence, as she had desired it a few minutes ago when they entered the house together after Mrs. Sibley had left them, and when, full of relief and grat.i.tude, she had said: "Oh, do come up to my room for a few minutes! I want to ask you something." No, she would no longer desire her presence, even with the added relief,--the added debt of grat.i.tude for Hope's voluntary offer to say nothing of Raymond Armitage's rudeness. She would not only no longer desire her presence, but she would doubtless turn upon her with hot resentment, as she had turned upon Kate on a previous occasion; and it was to avoid the outburst of this resentment that Hope rose to make herself ready to leave the room when she had come to the end of her story. But as she said her last word, as she turned to go,--

"Don't, don't go!" was called after her, in a queer stifled voice, not at all like Dorothea's usual high loud tones when she was protesting against anything,--a queer stifled voice that had--could it be possible?--a sound of tears in it? and--and there was a look in Dorothea's eyes,--yes, a look, as if the tears were there too, were almost ready to fall.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "DON'T, DON'T GO"]

A lump began to rise in Hope's throat. Had she been too harsh in what she had told, or in the way she had told it? Had they all been too harsh, too cold in their treatment of this girl's offences? It was true that they were all against her,--the "all" who comprised the little set of the older girls, and perhaps--perhaps--But what was that that Dorothea was saying?

"I think you've been awfully kind to take all this trouble for me; and I've always thought you were so indifferent,--that you didn't in the least care what became of me."

"Kind? indifferent? I don't understand," faltered Hope, staring blankly in her amazement at Dorothea.

"Yes, I should never have thought of your taking the least trouble, putting yourself out for me. I knew you didn't approve of me very much, but I supposed that you were so indifferent that it didn't matter to you. I don't half believe, and I never have, that such dreadful consequences would come of going against Miss Marr's rules; but _you_ do, I see, and it was awfully kind of you to take all this trouble to pull me out of the danger you thought I was in,--awfully kind, and I sha'n't forget it; and if you call this meddling, it's a very different sort of meddling from some other people's. It's easy enough for some folks to _talk_ and criticise everything you do, telling you what you ought and what you ought not to do, as if you were a mere ignoramus. I never would stand that kind of thing. Yes, it's a very different sort of thing that you've done, to put yourself out, and maybe run a risk yourself in doing it; and then to promise, as you have, not to say anything about that horrid part of the whole affair,--Raymond Armitage's hateful impoliteness! Well, I don't think there are many girls that would hold their tongues like that; and I--I--I just--just--love you for it!" wound up Dorothea, her voice breaking in a sudden little tempest of tears.

"Oh, but I--I--I'm not what you--what you think--I'm not--I don't deserve--you don't know me," stammered Hope, astonished and embarra.s.sed beyond words.

"I knew you from the first, the very first," went on Dorothea.

Hope started.

"From the very first, when I saw you coming down the corridor that afternoon I arrived, as the kind of girl I'd like,--a girl who wouldn't be mean and meddlesome; and I knew you were a lady of the real stuff, and you _are_--a long shot ahead of most of 'em here; and oh, I say--"

Dorothea had now conquered her tears,--"aren't you the girl I saw last year at Papanti's with the Edlicotts?"

"No."

"Well, you look so like her I thought you might be, or some relation of hers maybe. You're just of her stamp, any way. Anna Fleming is always talking about those Knickerbocker Van der Bergs as if they were ahead of everybody else, and she is always quoting Kate Van der Berg as being so swell in her looks and her manners. Looks and manners! I told Anna the last time she said this to me, that _you_ were a great sight _more_ swell. And you are. Oh, I know who's who; there can't anybody tell _me_!

Manners! I don't call it very good manners to talk _at_ people as Kate Van der Berg has talked at me, with all that stuff of what her brother Schuyler says about girls. She never liked me from the start, and she did what she could to set you, and, for that matter, the rest of the girls against me. I soon caught on to that. If it hadn't been for her--"

"Oh, Dorothea! Dorothea!" burst in Hope at this point, "I can't let you go on any more like this,--it would be mean and cowardly and dishonorable in me. You're all wrong, all wrong! Kate hasn't set me or any one else against you. You don't know, you don't remember--you think I--I would have been more--more sociable--more friendly, if it hadn't been for Kate, but--but it is--it is Kate who would have been more sociable, more friendly perhaps, if it hadn't been for me! _You_ have forgotten _me_--you have forgotten that we have ever met before, but we have, and _I_ have never forgotten, for you--you hurt me horribly--horribly at that time. I remember everything about it--every word; and when I met you in the corridor, the day you arrived here in the autumn, I knew you at once, but I saw that you had forgotten me, and I--"

"But when--where--how long ago was it--that time we met first--and what in the world did I say to hurt you so?" interrupted Dorothea with wide-open eyes of amazement.

"It was at Brookside, years ago."

"At Brookside? I never knew a girl like you at Brookside."

"Not like me now. I was only ten years old then, and I--was selling mayflowers in the Brookside station."

"Oh, I remember! I remember!" cried Dorothea, leaping down from the bed where she was sitting. "And you--you are that girl?"

"Yes, my father was an engineer on that road, and couldn't afford to buy me what I wanted more than anything in the world--a violin, and I thought I would have to give it up--to go without it, until one day on the street I heard a boy with a basket of mayflowers crying 'Ten cents a bunch,' and then I saw how I might earn the money that I wanted so much, and buy my violin myself."

"And you--_you_ are that little girl--that little 'Ten-cents-a-bunch,'

as I called you afterward to my father! Oh, oh, it all comes to me now; how mad I got because you stood up to me, and talked back to me. I suppose I was a great inquisitive brat, and fired off a lot of inquisitive questions at you,--I was always asking questions,--and you got mad at 'em and went for me, and then _I_ got mad with you, and we had a regular squabble. I told my father about it, and he laughed and said, 'I don't think you had the best of it, Dolly;' and then I remember, too, something he said to Mary, my sister,--Mary had taken a great fancy to you,--something about your father knowing a lot about engines,--being a genius at that kind of thing; and then papa laughed again and asked me, if your father should turn out a millionaire some day, how'd I like my impudent little girl--that's _you_, you know--turning into a millionaire's daughter, and I said I'd say,'Ten cents a bunch to her,' and I have, I have! For your father _has_ turned into a millionaire, hasn't he? and that's what it means, your being here, and your having a Stradivari violin! Oh, oh, oh, it's just like a story, just like a play--a Cinderella play; but," catching a queer expression on Hope's face, "I'm awfully sorry I hurt your feelings as I did, but you mustn't lay it up against me,--n.o.body ever lays anything up against me. I didn't _mean_ to hurt your feelings, but I didn't know any better then, and anyhow, everything's come out all right for you now,--you've come up out of the soot and ashes just as Cinderella did, only _your_ soot was engine soot, and you've come up at the top of everything, and I _do_ say, _now_, that you are a great sight more swell in your looks and your manners and in _yourself_ than Kate Van der Berg, I don't care _what_ soot and ashes you came up from."

The queer expression on Hope's face had by this time deepened into something that looked like a wondering smile, a smile that seemed to say, "How perfectly astonishing this girl is!"

Dorothea saw the smile, and with a sudden acuteness that now and then came to her, hit upon its meaning, and cried out,--

"Oh, I see what you think,--I surprise you all round, I know, I'm so outspoken and blunt. Jimmy says I'm beastly blunt sometimes. I suppose in the first place that you expected me to have laid things up against you as you did against me; but, goody gracious, I never remember a quarter of what I say nor a quarter of what anybody else says after a while, and I'm always ready to make up, to jump over anything that's disagreeable if I'm met half-way; and you,--well, you've met me more than half-way in this business about Raymond Armitage, and if I _had_ laid up anything you'd ever said,--and I do remember," laughing, "you said I was the most ignorant girl you'd ever seen,--I couldn't be mad with you for it now. No, I couldn't be anything but friendly to you,--and it's such jolly fun, too, the whole story,--my not remembering you, and the way it's turned out, and all; but look here, what's that you said about Kate Van der Berg,--that she might have been more sociable if it hadn't been for you? Did you tell her--I suppose you did--of our first meeting in the Brookside station, and the scrimmage we had, and that I hurt your feelings so dreadfully?"

"No; but after you had been here for a little time, Kate noticed that I--was rather stiff toward you."

"Yes, stiff and offish, but dreadfully polite, and in spite of it--the offishness, I mean--I liked you. _Isn't_ it funny? But go on--Kate noticed that you were stiff toward me--"

"And she asked me what it was that I disliked in you, and I told her just this,--that you and I had met long ago when we were little girls, and that you had said something then that had hurt me that I had never forgotten, but that you had forgotten it and forgotten _me_. That was all. I thought it was better to tell her what I did than to try to turn the subject, because if I tried to do that she would have thought the matter worse than it was."

"Well, I suppose she told the girls what you said, and made much of it, and--"

"She told no one. I asked her at once not to speak of it, and she promised that she wouldn't, and I know that she didn't."

"But you--I don't see, when you have talked with her, as you must have done, you are so intimate with her--about your mayflower business and everything--how you could help mentioning our scrimmage."