"You're jealous," she said, "because you haven't got such a brother yourself. Billy's all right. He's everything Sue says he is."
In the midst of the banter that followed, the door opened, and Joy Cross entered.
She put her suitcase down by the bed, and nodded to the girls indifferently. They nodded back and went on with the inspection of Blue Bonnet's wardrobe.
Blue Bonnet put the miniature carefully away in the bureau drawer, and, with that instinct of politeness which is inborn, went over to Joy and extended her hand.
Joy took it listlessly. The girls scarcely turned round.
When the clothes had all been put away, Annabel renewed her invitation to tea. She did not include Joy, and Blue Bonnet felt rather indignant. It seemed so rude.
"You girls certainly have it in for my room-mate," she said, as she closed the door, and a wave of sympathy went back to Joy.
Ruth Biddle shrugged her shoulders and made a grimace.
"She isn't in our crowd," she said, as if that excluded her from the right to exist--almost.
Annabel's room was a good deal like Annabel. It inclined to frills. It was furnished charmingly in cretonnes--pink, with roses and trailing vines. Pennants from Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Cornell, and many other colleges adorned the walls. Everything in view--and there was much--expressed Annabel. Ruth's personality--if she had any--was entirely missing.
Annabel shook up a cushion and tucked it behind Blue Bonnet comfortably. She had a hospitable manner that fitted pleasantly with the cosiness of the room. Blue Bonnet looked about admiringly.
"I didn't know they allowed you to have so much in your room," she said, surprised.
"They don't--ordinarily. I've been here a long time, and things accumulate. Anyway, I told Miss North that if I couldn't have things the way I wanted them this year, I'd go somewhere else. They'll do a good deal to keep you after they once get you. You'll soon find that out."
"Oh, I don't know," Ruth said from her end of the room, where she was operating a chafing dish, "they send you away fast enough if you don't keep the rules. You remember that Fanny Price, last year."
"Oh, well,--_that_, of course. Fanny Price hadn't any business here in the first place." Annabel began to arrange the tea cups.