nce it happened that I should not
have said what I did and that I have been sorry for it all winter. That
is all I can say. If you feel you can't forgive me I suppose there is
nothing more to be said."

"Oh, Rilla dear, don't snap me up like that," pleaded Irene. "Of course
I'll forgive you--though I did feel awfully about it--how awfully I
hope you'll never know. I cried for weeks over it. And I hadn't said or
done a thing!"

Rilla choked back a retort. After all, there was no use in arguing with
Irene, and the Belgians were starving.

"Don't you think you can help us with the concert," she forced herself
to say. Oh, if only Irene would stop looking at that boot! Rilla could
just hear her giving Olive Kirk an account of it.

"I don't see how I really can at the last moment like this," protested
Irene. "There isn't time to learn anything new."

"Oh, you have lots of lovely songs that nobody in the Glen ever heard
before," said Rilla, who knew Irene had been going to town all winter
for lessons and that this was only a pretext. "They will all be new
down there."

"But I have no accompanist," protested Irene.

"Una Meredith can accompany you," said Rilla.

"Oh, I couldn't ask her," sighed Irene. "We haven't spoken since last
fall. She was so hateful to me the time of our Sunday-school concert
that I simply had to give her up."

Dear, dear, was Irene at feud with everybody? As for Una Meredith being
hateful to anybody, the idea was so farcical that Rilla had much ado to
keep from laughing in Irene's very face.

"Miss Oliver is a beautiful pianist and can play any accompaniment at
sight," said Rilla desperately. "She will play for you and you could
run over your songs easily tomorrow evening at Ingleside before the
concert."

"But I haven't anything to wear. My new evening-dress isn't home from
Charlottetown yet, and I simply cannot wear my old one at such a big
affair. It is too shabby and old-fashioned."

"Our concert," said Rilla slowly, "is in aid of Belgian children who
are starving to death. Don't you think you could wear a shabby dress
once for their sake, Irene?"

"Oh, don't you think those accounts we get of the conditions of the
Belgians are very much exaggerated?" said Irene. "I'm sure they can't
be actually starving you know, in the twentieth century. The newspapers
always colour things so highly."

Rilla concluded that she had humiliated herself enough. There was such
a thing as self-respect.