very sore indeed at the sufferance on which she supposed
herself to be.

But once Evelyn caught her and said: "Don't, for gracious' sake, knock
each time you want to come in, child. This is your room now as well as
mine."

Laura reddened, and blurted out something about knowing how she must
hate to have HER stuck in there.

Evelyn wrinkled up her forehead and laughed. "What rot! Do you think
I'd have asked to have you, if I hated it so much?"

"You asked to have me?" gasped Laura.

"Of course--didn't you know? Old Gurley said I'd need to have some one;
so I chose you."

Laura was too dumbfounded, and too diffident, to ask the grounds of
such a choice. But the knowledge that it was so, worked an instant
change in her.

In all the three years she had been at school, she had not got beyond a
surface friendliness with any of her fellows. Even those who had been
her "chums" had wandered like shades through the groves of her
affection: rough, teasing Bertha; pretty, lazy Inez; perky Tilly,
slangily frank Maria and Kate, Mary and her moral influence, clever,
instructive Cupid: to none of them had she been drawn by any deeper
sense of affinity. And though she had come to believe, in the course of
the last, more peaceful year, that she had grown used to being what you
would call an unpopular girl--one, that is, with whom no one ever
shared a confidence--yet seldom was there a child who longed more
ardently to be liked, or suffered more acutely under dislike. Apart
however from the brusque manner she had contracted, in her search after
truth, it must be admitted that Laura had but a small talent for
friendship; she did not grasp the constant give-and-take intimacy
implies; the liking of others had to be brought to her, unsought, she,
on the other hand, being free to stand back and consider whether or no
the feeling was worth returning. And friends are not made in this
fashion.

But Evelyn had stoutly, and without waiting for permission, crossed the
barrier; and each new incident in her approach was pleasanter than the
last. Laura was pleased, and flattered, and round the place where her
heart was, she felt a warm and comfortable glow.

She began to return the liking, with interest, after the manner of a
lonely, bottled-up child. And everything about Evelyn made it easy to
grow fond of her. To begin with, Laura loved pretty things and pretty
people; and her new friend was out and away the prettiest girl in the
school