CHAPTER EIGHT: A CHANGE IN JANET

"Hello, you two, where are you bound for?" Eleanor joined Sally and Phyllis as they were on their way to Sally's house and took them each by an arm.

"Home," Sally replied, "home to muse with wonder and sorrow over the sickening cruelty of Ducky Lucky."

"I know," Eleanor nodded sympathetically; "isn't to-morrow's math. simply terrible. I'm not going to try to do it."

"Well, I am," Sally announced emphatically. "Catch me staying in for an hour and listening to a long and weary lecture on my many sins; no thanks. If the worse comes to the worst, I will make Daddy do it for me."

"Where's Rosey-posey?" inquired Phyllis. "You're not going to walk all the way home to your house, are you?" Eleanor lived clear across the city on Riverside Drive.

"Well, well, I guess not, but I had to make a start to get Rosey away from the piano. She's playing while Madge teaches some of the other seniors how to dance the latest step. I wish she'd hurry, I hate losing my special bus." She glanced behind her and then stopped. "Here she comes now."

Rosamond joined them. She was out of breath but she was laughing.

"Oh, my hat!" she exclaimed. "Muriel will kill me yet. I met her in the cloakroom and we went out together. I thought she looked worried, but I didn't catch on until she began making excuses to get rid of me, then I looked ahead and down the street, busily tying his shoe, HE was waiting."

"Well, I hope you had the manners to leave at once?" -- Eleanor laughed. "Or did you wait and make her miserable?"

Rosamond winked one eye mischievously.

"I behaved with perfect decorum," she replied. "I said I really must run for the bus as the conductor was a cousin of my sister-in-law's aunt and he let me ride for nothing. I said it loud too, so that He could hear, and Muriel was wild."

"Oh, Rosey, how could you, you wretch; poor Muriel!" Phyllis tried not to laugh, but gave up and joined the rest.

Rosamond turned them down one of the side streets abruptly.

"Where are you going?" Eleanor demanded. "I want to go home; I'm hungry."

"Now don't be absurd," Rosamond admonished. "You can eat any old time, but it isn't often that you can see what I am going to show you."

"Oh, now what are you up to?" Eleanor protested, but Rosamond only pointed to the corner of the next avenue and told them to watch.

"Aunt Jane's poll parrot, Muriel!" Sally was the first to see that the girl and boy approaching them was their classmate and her friend. They would soon meet.

"I'll giggle, I know I will," Eleanor warned them. "Rosey, it's all your fault. Let's turn around."

"Never," Rosamond protested. "Just walk like little ladies and bow politely when they pass," she said with a ridiculous primness that was exactly like the art teacher at school.

They walked; there was nothing else to do; and Muriel and the boy beside her came toward them, deep in conversation. It was noticeable that Muriel was doing most of the talking.
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When they were even with them, Rosamond bowed formally, and in a high and very affected voice she exclaimed,

"Why, Muriel, how do you do?"

Sally called a careless hello, and Eleanor, to full of laughter to dare speech, only nodded. It was Phyllis that gave a little gasp of astonishment that was repeated in turn by the boy. He recovered himself and pulled off his cap in response to her quick smile.

They were hardly out of earshot before the girls turned to her.

"Phyllis Page, you've known him all the time, you wretch," Rosamond accused.

"I have not," Phyllis denied. "I was never so surprised in my life."

"What's his name?" Sally demanded, but Phyllis shook her head.

"I don't know," she protested, "honestly I don't. I have only seen him once before and then I wasn't really introduced, his first name, or rather his nickname, is Chuck, and that's all I know except," -- she added provokingly, "that he doesn't believe in brownies." And that was all she would say on the subject, though the girls did their best to make her explain.

"Well, we have to go or Eleanor will faint from hunger," Rosamond said regretfully as they reached the avenue again and waited for the bus. "But I'll find out some more about this, if I have to ask Mureil," she added teasingly.

Sally and Phyllis hurried home. Now that the girls had left them, they forgot everything but Janet and their plans. They were late in reaching Sally's home, but they found a dainty luncheon waiting for them and Sally's mother was delighted to see Phyllis.

"But where's the twin?" she demanded. "I do want to see her so much. Sally says she is the very image of you and a darling too."

Phyllis looked uncomfortable and tried to smile. It was Sally who explained.

"She was coming, but at the last minute she had to go home. Phyl and I are going over for her a little later and, darling mother of mine, we will bring her over here to call on you if you promise us hot cinnamon toast and cake to go with tea."

Mrs. Ladd laughed and pinched Sally's cheek. She was a tall and strikingly handsome woman with flashing black eyes and the jolliest laugh in the world. All Sally's friends loved her almost as much as they loved Sally, and she was always in demand with Auntie Mogs to act as chaperone to the various skating and theater parties.

"You are getting very grown up," she answered now, her eyes twinkling. "Last year it was hot chocolate you wanted and the year before that ice cream and now it's tea."

"And we really hate it," Phyllis laughed. "We'd lots rather have chocolate."

"Oh, well, give us chocolate then," Sally exclaimed. "Only be sure there's plenty of toast."

"For Phyllis's twin, I suppose," Mrs. Ladd laughed. "Very well, I'll remember," she promised, as she left them to go out.

The girls ate hurriedly and then talked up in Sally's room until they thought it was time to go back.

"What shall we do if she won't come!" Sally said seriously.

"Oh, there's no fear of that," Phyllis replied hastily. " She'll come if we are there to make her and she will love your mother, I know she will. I do hope she hasn't gone out anywhere with Auntie Mogs."

"Let's hurry," Sally said, the idea making her feel the need for immediate action. "If she's out we can wait for her."

But Janet was not out. She was sitting in the library window-seat with Born in her lap. She saw the girls coming up the street and she knocked on the window to them and waved.

"I hoped you'd bring Sally back with you, " she called as they ran up the steps. "Auntie Mogs is out and Boru is too sleepy to be very good company. I almost went over to get Sir Galahad, but I thought they might know I wasn't you and refuse to give him to me."

Sally had never heard Janet say so much at one time, and she looked at her with a new interest. Perhaps she was going to be human after all and without their aid. She devoutly hoped so.

"We came back especially to get you," she replied as she patted Boru. `Mother wants you to come to tea with her and incidentally us."

"Oh, that will be bully," Janet said, and Phyllis had hard work to believe her ears.

"What are you reading?" she inquired as a book dropped from Janet's lap.

Janet picked it up and laughed.

"Elsie Dinsmore," she answered, blushing a little -- "I found it behind a shelf in the corner and I have been laughing myself sick over it."

"Laughing?" Phyllis was more surprised than ever. As she remembered the Elsie Books they were more calculated to make you weep than laugh. 

"Yes, Elsie was always going off into corners to cry. I've just finished the part where her father made her play a hymn on Sunday and she had to be carried fainting to her room and I don't know just why but I began to think I was like Elsie and well, I think I'm cured, " she ended in confusion.

"Oh, Janet, of all the silly notions Phyllis exclaimed. "Since when have you been going off into corners to weep?"

"Or fainted at hearing music on a Sunday?" added Sally.

"Well, I haven't exactly,"  Janet admitted, "but I have done a lot of silly sulking, but honestly I didn't realize how silly I was being."

"You never sulked in your whole entire life Janet Page," Phyllis protested warmly. I won't have you saying such a thing."

"Of course not," Sally agreed, no less warmly; "do chuck that silly old book out of the window and come out for a walk. Bring Boru, too; mother will adore him."

Janet went upstairs, still laughing, and Sally and Phyllis were left staring at each other.

What has come over her?" Sally inquired.

"I don't know and I don't much care," Phyllis answered happily.

Janet was humming as she put on her berry cap and pulled it over at a rakish angle. She had spent a very profitable afternoon laughing at herself. At first the laughter had been a little too grim, but before long the grimness had disappeared and only a good-natured ridicule was left. It is good to be able to laugh at yourself once in a while, but Janet was glad that the time was over.

She had made up her mind not to tell them about Daphne, that was to be her secret.

Continue to chapter 9