With her uncle's influence on her side, Alison felt an official seal had been placed on her friendship; and as Mrs. Longton was pleased for Dorothy to have found a companion, the two girls were much together. Ringborough Hydropathic was a favourite resort for Coleminster people, and two other girls from the College happened to be staying there with their families--Hope Lawson and Gabrielle Helm, who was in the Lower Fifth. Hope did not look particularly pleased to meet her classmates; she gave them each a cool little nod, and took no further notice of them. She was much occupied with her own set of friends, and did not seem disposed to trouble herself with her schoolfellows; nor were they anxious to push themselves under her notice. Gabrielle Helm, on the contrary, claimed acquaintance with Dorothy and Alison, and introduced her brothers, Percy and Eric, who attended the Coleminster Boys' College. The young people were keen on golf, and from them Dorothy received her first lessons on the links, laughing very much over her mistakes and false strokes, and enjoying every moment of the time. She had never spent such holidays, or dreamed that they were even possible; and the days did not seem half or a quarter long enough for all the delightful things there were to do in them.
"It was good of you to bring me," she said sometimes to Mrs. Longton.
"It's a pleasure to see your bright face, my dear," replied her kind chaperon. "You're so rosy, your aunt will hardly know you when you return."
"Dorothy is growing quite pretty," said Gabrielle Helm to Alison. "I used to think her rather a scrawny-looking girl, but she's suddenly developed into almost a beauty. Percy said last night he thought her ripping, and he's a fearful old 'hard-to-please'."
"Yes," said Alison contemplatively, "Dorothy has changed. Of course, her eyes were always lovely, but her face has filled out lately, and she does her hair more becomingly. That's made a difference. And that blue dress suits her. I think she's prettier now than Hope Lawson."
Dorothy was indeed having "the time of her life", and very great happiness is often an aid to good looks. Though she found Mrs. Clarke rather chilly and distant, she liked Alison's Uncle David immensely. Sometimes the two girls would accompany him and the doctor on a fishing expedition, or a walk through the pine woods, where he proved the pleasantest and most humorous of companions; or, better still, they would catch him in the half-hour before dinner, decoy him into one of the small sitting-rooms generally empty at that time in the evening, and then cajole him into telling some of his experiences in the jungle. To Dorothy these Indian stories were thrilling; she was never tired of hearing about tigers and elephants, ruined temples, fakirs, coolies, and midnight adventures.