“Why do you think that, pray?” demanded Agatha, a little roused.

“You must be, or Miss Wilson would not be angry with you.  Of course, according to your own account, you are always in the right, and everyone else is always wrong; but you shouldn’t have written that in the book.  You know I speak as your friend.”

“And pray what does your wretched little soul know of my motives and feelings?”

“It is easy enough to understand you,” retorted Gertrude, nettled.  “Self-conceit is not so uncommon that one need be at a loss to recognize it.  And mind, Agatha Wylie,” she continued, as if goaded by some unbearable reminiscence, “if you are really going, I don’t care whether we part friends or not.  I have not forgotten the day when you called me a spiteful cat.”

“I have repented,” said Agatha, unmoved.  “One day I sat down and watched Bacchus seated on the hearthrug, with his moony eyes looking into space so thoughtfully and patiently that I apologized for comparing you to him.  If I were to call him a spiteful cat he would only not believe me.”

“Because he is a cat,” said Jane, with the giggle which was seldom far behind her tears.

“No; but because he is not spiteful.  Gertrude keeps a recording angel inside her little head, and it is so full of other people’s faults, written in large hand and read through a magnifying glass, that there is no room to enter her own.”

“You are very poetic,” said Gertrude; “but I understand what you mean, and shall not forget it.”

“You ungrateful wretch,” exclaimed Agatha, turning upon her so suddenly and imperiously that she involuntarily shrank aside:  “how often, when you have tried to be insolent and false with me, have I not driven away your bad angel—­by tickling you?  Had you a friend in the college, except half-a-dozen toadies, until I came?  And now, because I have sometimes, for your own good, shown you your faults, you bear malice against me, and say that you don’t care whether we part friends or not!”

“I didn’t say so.”

“Oh, Gertrude, you know you did,” said Jane.

“You seem to think that I have no conscience,” said Gertrude querulously.

“I wish you hadn’t,” said Agatha.  “Look at me!  I have no conscience, and see how much pleasanter I am!”

“You care for no one but yourself,” said Gertrude.  “You never think that other people have feelings too.  No one ever considers me.”

“Oh, I like to hear you talk,” cried Jane ironically.  “You are considered a great deal more than is good for you; and the more you are considered the more you want to be considered.”

“As if,” declaimed Agatha theatrically, “increase of appetite did grow by what it fed on.  Shakespeare!”

“Bother Shakespeare,” said Jane, impetuously, “—­old fool that expects credit for saying things that everybody knows!  But if you complain of not being considered, Gertrude, how would you like to be me, whom everybody sets down as a fool?  But I am not such a fool as—­”