nyhow, I should like to know?

I went off to my own room with the letter, and Joyce followed me and
found me crying. She made a face out of the window at Eugenia, and told
me never to mind what anybody said. There was a big wide world outside
of Eugenia's set with its silly airs and graces, and sensible people
made fun of them. Then she offered to illustrate my answer to Davy's
letter, and drew a picture of Calico and Lad at the top of the page, and
Lloyd's parrot at the bottom. That reminded me to tell him some funny
things the parrot had said, and in writing them I got over my
homesickness.

Eugenia has a crest on her paper, because some one of her
great-great-great-grandfathers, almost back to Noah, was a lord. But it
doesn't make her remember to act like a lady. She ought to be made to
learn the lines that were in my copy-book once:

"Kind hearts are more than coronets,
And simple faith than Norman blood."

CHAPTER VIII.

THE GYPSY FORTUNE-TELLER.

There had fallen a pause in the round of merry-makings. After a week of
picnics and fishing-parties, lawn fetes and tennis tournaments, there
came a day for which no special entertainment had been planned. It was a
hot morning, and the girls were out under the trees: Betty in the swing,
with a book in her lap, as usual, Joyce on a camp-stool near by, making
a sketch of her, and Eugenia swinging idly in a hammock.

The Little Colonel had been swinging with her, but something had called
her to the house, and a deep silence fell on the little group after her
departure. Betty, lost in her book, and Joyce, intent on her sketch, did
not seem to notice it, but presently Eugenia sat up in the hammock and
gave her pillow an impatient thump.

[Illustration: "'I'M GLAD THAT I DON'T HAVE TO LIVE IN THE COUNTRY THE
YEAR ROUND!'"]

"Whew! how deadly stupid it is here!" she exclaimed. "I'm glad that I
don't have to live in the country the year round! Nothing to do--nothing
to see--I'd turn to a vegetable in a little while and strike root. I
wish something exciting would happen, for I'm bored stiff."

Betty looked up from her story in astonishment. "Why, I think it is
lovely here!" she cried. "I'd never get tired of Locust in a hundred
years!"

Eugenia smiled, a pitying, amused sort of smile that brought a flush to
Betty's cheek. There was a tinge of a sneer in it that seemed to say,
"Oh, you poor thing, of course _you_ like it. You have never known any