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Page 15
It made her think of so many things that she loved to recall--little
incidents of her visit to The Locusts; and the smiling lips seemed to be
saying, "Don't you remember" in such a friendly companionable way that
she whispered to herself, "Oh, you dear! If you were only here this
year, what an angel of a chum you would make!"
Then she looked across at Ethelinda, who had arranged the windows to her
satisfaction and was now stretching the electric light cord from her
dressing table to her bed, so that the bulb would hang directly over it.
In another moment she had propped herself comfortably against the
pillows, and settled down with a book.
Mary sat up astonished. She had sacrificed her own plans and come to bed
for Ethelinda's sake, and now here was the electric light blazing full
in her eyes, utterly regardless of _her_ comfort. She was about to
sputter an indignant protest when she looked up at the picture. It
seemed to smile back at her as if it were a real person with whom she
might exchange amused glances. "Did you ever see such colossal
unconcern?" she whispered, as if the pictured Lloyd could hear.
For a moment she thought she would get up and do the things she had
intended doing when she came up stairs, but it required too much of an
effort to dress again, and she was more tired than she had realized
after her exciting day. So she lay still. She began to get drowsy
presently, but she could not go to sleep with that irritating light in
her eyes. She threw a counterpane over the foot-board, but it was too
low to shield her. Finally in desperation she slipped out of bed and got
her umbrella. Then opening it over her she thrust its handle under the
pillow to hold it in place, and lay back under its sheltering canopy
with a suppressed giggle.
[Illustration: "LAY BACK UNDER ITS SHELTERING CANOPY WITH A SUPPRESSED
GIGGLE."]
Again she looked up at Lloyd's picture, thinking, "I'd have been awfully
mad if you hadn't been here to smile with me over it."
The bulb began to sway, throwing shadows across the wall. Ethelinda had
struck the cord in reaching up to pull her pillows higher. The
flickering shadows made Mary think of something--a verse that Lloyd had
written in her autograph album once, because it was the motto of the
Seminary Shadow Club.
"This learned I from the shadow on a tree
That to and fro did sway upon the wall,
Our shadowy selves--our influence, may fall
Where we can never be."
She repeated it drowsily, peering out from under her umbrella at the
swaying shadows, till something the lines suggested made her sit up,
wide awake.
"Why, I can take _you_ for my chum, of course," she thought. "Your
_shadow-self_. Then it won't make any difference whether Miss
Haughtiness Hurst talks to me or not, _You'll_ understand and sympathize
with me."
All her life when Mary's world did not measure up to her expectations,
she had been in the habit of making a world of her own; a beautiful
make-believe place that held all her heart's desires. It had given her
gilded coaches and Cinderella ball-attire in her nursery days, and
enchanted orchards whose trees bore all manner of confections. It had
bestowed beauty and fortune and accomplishments on her, and sent dashing
cavaliers to seek her hand when she came to the romance-reading age.
Friends and social pleasures were hers at will when the lonely desert
life grew irksome. Whatever was dull the Midas touch of her imagination
made golden, so now it was easy to close her eyes and conjure up a
make-believe chum that for the time was as good as a real one.
Absorbed in her book, Ethelinda read on until the signal sounded for
lights out. Never before accustomed to such restrictions, she looked up
impatiently. She had forgotten where she was for the moment in the
interest of her book. When her glance fell on the umbrella, spread over
Mary's bed like a tent, she raised herself on her elbow with a look of
astonishment. It took her some time to understand why it had been put
there.
Never having roomed with any one before, and never having had to
consider any one's convenience besides her own, it had not occurred to
her that she might be making Mary uncomfortable. The mute umbrella
called attention to the fact more eloquently than any protest could have
done. Ethelinda had endured having a room-mate as she endured all the
other disagreeable requirements of the school. Now for the first time it
dawned upon her that there might be two sides to this story, also that
this strange girl who seemed so eager to intrude herself on her notice
might be worth knowing after all. If Mary could have seen her bewildered
stare and then the amused expression which twitched her mouth for an
instant, she would have had hopes that the thawing out process had
begun.
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