some of us
work for a living!"

Dolly's honest anger was very different from the petulance that she had
sometimes displayed, as on the occasion when she had been jealous of
poor Bessie. And Bessie recognized the difference. It seemed to
reveal a new side of Dolly's complex character, the side that was loyal
and fine. Dolly was not resenting any injury, real or fancied, to
herself now; the insult was to her friends, and Bessie realized that
she had never before seen Dolly really angry.

"As if I'd leave you girls and stay with them while we're here!" cried
Dolly. "I can just see myself! They'd want to know if I didn't think
Mary Smith's new dress was perfectly horrid, and if I said I did,
they'd go and tell her, and try to make trouble. Oh, I know
them--they're just a lot of cats!"

"Oh, don't you think you may be hard on her, Dolly?" asked Bessie.
Secretly she didn't think so; she thought Gladys Cooper was probably
just what Dolly had called her. But it seemed to her that she ought to
keep Dolly from quarreling with an old friend if she could. "Maybe she
just wanted to see you, and she knew you, and didn't know the rest of
us."

"Oh, nonsense, Bessie! You're always trying to make people out better
than they are. I don't know these girls who are up here with her, but
she'd say she knew me, and that we lived in the right sort of street at
home, and that her mother and my aunt called on one another, so I'm all
right. I know her little ways!"

And Bessie was wise enough to see that to argue with Dolly while she
was in such an angry mood would only make matters worse. Bessie loved
peace, because, perhaps, she had had so little of it while she lived in
Hedgeville with the Hoovers. But Dolly wasn't in a peaceful mood, and
words weren't to bring her into one, so Bessie decided to change the
subject.

"We'd better hurry back," she said. "I really think it must be almost
time to start getting supper ready."

"Good!" said Dolly. "We haven't really come so far, but it's taken us
a long time, hasn't it? That old train from Moose Junction is about
the pokiest thing in the way of a train I ever saw."

So they made their way back to the big building that, as they had
already learned, was called the "Living Camp." The sleeping rooms were
in other and smaller buildings, that were grouped about the central
one, in which were only three rooms, beside the big kitchen, a huge,
square hall, with a polished floor,