For an hour or two at least each day they sat together so, for the being together.  The work was “taken up.”  Dakie Thayne read stories to them sometimes:  Miss Craydocke had something always to produce and to summon them to sit and hear; some sketch of strange adventure, or a ghost marvel, or a bright, spicy magazine essay; or, knowing where to find sympathizers and helpers, Dakie would rush in upon them uncalled, with some discovery, or want, or beautiful thing to show of his own.  They were quite a little coterie by themselves.  It shaped itself to this more and more.

Leslie did not neglect her own party.  She drove and walked with Mrs. Linceford, and was ready for anything the Haddens really wanted of her; but Mrs. Linceford napped and lounged a good deal, and could spare her then; and Jeannie and Elinor seemed somehow to feel the want of her less than they had done,—­Elinor unconsciously drawn away by new attraction, Jeannie rather of a purpose.

I am afraid I cannot call it anything else but a little loss of caste which seemed coming to Leslie Goldthwaite just now, through these new intimacies of hers.  “Something always gets crowded out.”  This, too,—­her popularity among the first,—­might have to be, perhaps, one of the somethings.

Now and then she felt it so,—­perceived the shade of difference toward her in the tone and manner of these young girls.  I cannot say that it did not hurt her a little.  She had self-love, of course; yet, for all, she was loyal to the more generous love,—­to the truer self-respect.  If she could not have both, she would keep the best.  There came to be a little pride in her own demeanor,—­a waiting to be sought again.

“I can’t think what has come over Les’,” said Jeannie Hadden, one night, on the piazza, to a knot of girls.  She spoke in a tone at once apologetic and annoyed.  “She was always up to anything at home.  I thought she meant to lead us all off here.  She might have done almost what she pleased.”

“Everybody likes Leslie,” said Elinor.

“Why, yes, we all do,” put in Mattie Shannon.  “Only she will take up queer people, you see.  And—­well, they’re nice enough, I suppose; only there’s never room enough for everybody.”

“I thought we were all to be nowhere when she first came.  There was something about her,—­I don’t know what,—­not wonderful, but taking.  ‘Put her where you pleased, she was the central point of the picture,’ Frank said.”  This came from Josie Scherman.

“And she’s just dropped all, to run after goodness knows what and whom!  I can’t see through her!” rejoined Jeannie, with a sort of finality in her accent that seemed to imply, “I wash my hands of her, and won’t be supposed accountable.”

“Knew ye not,” broke in a gentle voice, “that she must be about her Master’s business?” It was scarcely addressed to them.  Miss Craydocke just breathed audibly the thought she could not help.