do, Betty; for you can't
join--you know you can't. With that awful, awful lie on your conscience,
you can't be a Speciality. I shall go wild with misery if you join.
Betty, you must say you won't."

Betty looked very scornfully at Fanny. "There are some people in the
world," she said, "who make me feel very wicked, and I am greatly
afraid you are one. Now, let me tell you plainly and frankly that if you
had said nothing I should probably not have wished to become that
extraordinary thing, a Speciality; but because you are in such a mortal
funk I shall join your club with the utmost pleasure. So now you know."

CHAPTER VII

SCOTCH HEATHER

Betty was true to her word. After school that day, Margaret Grant and
Olive Repton came up to her and asked her in a very pretty manner if she
would become a member of their Speciality Club.

"Of course," said Margaret, "you don't know anything about us or our
rules at present; but we think we should like you to join, so we are
here now to invite you to come to our next meeting, which will take
place on Thursday of next week, at eight o'clock precisely, in my
bedroom."

"I don't know where your bedroom is," said Betty.

"But I know where yours is!" exclaimed Olive; "so I will fetch you,
Betty, and bring you to Margaret's room. Oh, I am sure you will enjoy
it--we have such fun! Sometimes we give quite big entertainments--that
is, when we invite the other girls, which we do once or twice during the
term. By the way, that reminds me that you will be most useful in that
respect, for you and your sisters have the largest bedroom in the house.
You will, of course, lend us your room when your turn comes; but that is
a long way off."

"I am so glad you are coming!" said Margaret. "You are the sort of girl
we want in our club. And now, please, tell me about your life in
Scotland."

"I will with pleasure," replied Betty. She looked full up into
Margaret's face as she spoke.

Margaret was older than Betty, and taller; and there was something about
her which commanded universal respect.

"I don't mind telling you," said Betty--"nor you," she added as Olive's
dancing blue eyes met hers; "for a kind of intuition tells me that you
would both love my wild moors and my beautiful heather. Oh, I say, do
come, both of you, and see our three little plots of garden! There's
Sylvia's plot, and Hester's, and mine; and we have a plant of heather,
straight from Craigie Muir, in the midst