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Promptly at eight she escaped from the door, near which she had been lingering for the past quarter-hour, with the carefully distinct announcement that she was going after Berta, and later she might attend the spread. Five minutes later she was bending over a fluffy little creature nestling on Gertrude's best pillow in one of the partitioned off bathrooms at the end of the corridor.
"I have suffered, and I will try to be kind. I think Elizabeth would have been glad." "Elizabeth is glad," said Robbie Belle. At her escape into the corridor Berta paused for a moment in the shadow of the staircase to brush the excitement from her glowing face.
"Very likely," responded the arch-conspirator, beginning at the lower edge of the tin doubtless itself delicious from long association 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.
With her chin grasped firmly in one fist, she was staring very hard at a corner of the ceiling where there was nothing in particular. Robbie looked at her and sighed, but the resignation in the sigh was transfigured by loving awe. She picked up her pencil in patient acquiescence. Berta must not be disturbed. "Chir-awhirr, chir-awhirr, tweet, tweet, tweet!"
Berta earned a dollar by helping Bea with the three which that impulsive young woman had rashly undertaken. In February she composed valentines and sold them to over-busy maidens who felt unequal to rhyming in the reaction after the midyear examinations. In March she painted Easter eggs and in April she arranged pots of growing ferns and flowers from the woods.
And as little did she forget how strange her mother's face was and how her voice trembled, when she said: "Do you know that you once had a little brother, whose name was Reuben, and he died because he sat on these stone steps and caught cold? You do not want to die and leave your mother, Berta?" Brother Reuben soon became just as living to his brothers and sisters as to his mother.
Meanwhile in the tower, Berta drew a long breath and glanced around at her dismayed and sobered companions. "The more I see of that girl," she said, "the better I like her. And we have been awfully silly that's a fact. The next time I see her I shall tell her so too. Now suppose we go and do a little studying our own selves."
"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.
"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.
"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?
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