Chapter II

While Granton continued his perturbed way down the lovely village street to the Elm House, which for the time being was the home of a pleasant colony of summer idlers seeking rest and diversion in Maugus, Miss Betty flitted lightly over the lawn and joined her friend, whom she found reposing in a hammock swung under the cool veranda.

"Oh, Dolly," was her breathless salutation, "I've got the awfullest thing to do! But I'll do it, or perish in the attempt!"

"Halloo, Betty!" was Miss Mosely's response and greeting; "how like a whirlwind you are! What is the matter? What have you got to do?"

"Beat Mr. Granton at tennis in the tournament."

"You and Mr. Bradford, you mean?"

"No; I mean all by myself,--in a single. I sha'n't play in the double at all, if I can get out of it without sneaking."

"What in the world has happened to bring you to this desperate frame of mind?"

"Well, Dolly, the fact is, Mr. Granton has been making himself particularly odious because I wouldn't throw over Frank Bradford to play with him, and--"

"I told you," her friend interrupted judicially, examining the toe of her slipper with much interest and satisfaction, "that you'd be sorry you agreed to play with Frank."

"But I'm not sorry," protested the other, with spirit. "Do you think I'm so bound up in Nat Granton that I can't get on without him? If he wanted me to play with him why didn't he ask me, instead of taking it for granted, in that insufferably conceited way of his, that I'd stand about and wait on his lordship's leisure? Oh, I'll pay him off! I shall go over to grandmother's every blessed day from now until the tournament and practise, so as to take down his top-loftical airs."

At which exhibition of spite and determination Miss Mosely fell to laughing, and said Betty's manner suggested pickled limes, which in turn reminded her of the chocolate-creams they had at boarding-school, and that brought to mind some particularly delicious marshmallows which had been saved until Betty should come over; and she added that it would be a very good plan to go into the house and devour them.

Over the flabby and inane confection with which the two friends regaled themselves, it was arranged that Dora should devote herself with Machiavelian shrewdness to bringing about a reconciliation between Frank Bradford and his betrothed, Flora Sturtevant, whose quarrel had led to the invitation which had involved Betty in her present difficulties. In the meantime, Mistress Mork was to give herself with great assiduity to the practice of cutting, volleying, and such devices of skill or cunning as would make possible the realization of her bold plan of conquering Mr. Granton in the tennis tournament, over which all the young people were just then much excited.

These conclusions were not reached without much digression, circumlocution, and irrelevant discourse upon various matters, with a good deal of consideration of the dress which would be both convenient and becoming for the important games.

"I have almost a mind to try a divided skirt," Betty said thoughtfully. "George saw one at a tournament in England, and it could be fixed so as not-- Oh, Dora, if George were only here! He knows all the new English rules and cuts, and all sorts of quirks. Oh, why did you have to quarrel with him just now? Now I shall lose my tennis just because you drove him away from Maugus."

"Why, Betty Mork! You said yourself you wouldn't stand his lordly ways; you know you did."

"Of course," returned her friend illogically; "but we both agreed that you'd have to make up with him some time; and I didn't know then that I should want him."

"But what could I do?" demanded Dora, divided between a sense of being deserted by her friend and a desire to have difficulties smoothed over. "Any girl with decent pride would have _had_ to send George away. You know how I hated to do it."

"But you might send for him now."

"Oh, I couldn't. That would be too awfully humiliating. I wonder you can propose it."

"Men are so dreadful," sighed Betty.

The two forlorn victims of masculine perversity pensively ate marshmallows in silence for a moment, revolving, no doubt, the most profound reflections upon the vanity of human affairs.

"I'll tell you what I will do," Betty said at length, reflectively. "I'll write to George and make him visit grandmother. He hasn't been there for a year, to stay; and, as grandmother says, she 'admires to have him.' I'll tell him if he'll stay there, out of sight, I think I can fix things with you."

"Oh, you delicious, darling hypocrite!" exclaimed her friend, embracing her rapturously. "You are a perfect treasure, Bet! I'll do anything to help you,--anything. I've been perfectly wretched ever since George went away; but of course I couldn't say so, if I'd died."