“Miss Smith can have my racket; I’m not going to play any longer!”

“Not going to play?  What do you mean?” shouted Will.

“I mean that I am not used to a surprise-party and to playing with strangers,” was the rude and angry answer.

“You—­you ought to—­” But Will controlled himself and stopped.  He was about to say, “You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”

Agnes, however, understood by the tone of his voice something of what he meant, and turned scornfully away, her head up, and with a glance at Tom that plainly showed she expected him to follow her.

But Tom made no movement of that kind.  He stood where he was, looking across at Will, who, red and ashamed, had approached Miss Smith, and was evidently making some sort of apology to her for the insult that had been offered to her; and Miss Smith was listening to this apology with the coolest little face imaginable.

Tom, taking all this in, gave another of his odd little chuckles.  Agnes heard it, and flushed scarlet.  So he was taking sides with Will Wentworth, was he?  And what—­what—­was that—­Tilly?  Yes, it was Tilly,—­Tilly with the racket she, Agnes, had flung down,—­Tilly standing in her place and—­and—­serving the ball back to that girl!  So Tilly was with them too?  Well, she would see, they would all see, that Agnes Brendon was not a person to be snubbed and disregarded in this fashion, nor a person to be forced to make acquaintances with vulgar or common people against her will.  Oh, they would see, they would see!  And bracing herself up with these indignant resolutions, Agnes betook herself to the hotel.

Before the end of the week there were two distinct parties in the house, where heretofore there had been but one,—­two distinct opposing forces.

On one side were Agnes and Dora and Amy; on the other side were Tilly and Tom and Will.  Dora and Amy were not naturally ill-natured girls, but they were inclined to be worldly and were greatly under Agnes’s influence.  She had been a sort of authority with them for a good while, perforce of her dominant disposition and the knowledge she seemed to possess of the worldly matters that were of so much interest to them.

“But I should think you would feel ashamed to side with Agnes Brendon in persecuting a poor little stranger,” said honest Tilly, a day or two after the tennis affair; for Agnes had at once set to work to carry out her plan of showing that she was not to be forced, as she expressed it, into making acquaintances she didn’t like, and had thus lost no opportunity of being disagreeable.

Dora flushed at Tilly’s words, but she answered coolly,—­

“Persecuting!  I don’t call it persecuting to avoid a person one doesn’t want to know.”