"Hush," warned Jean, a finger on her lips. "Come down on the lawn. We'll have to talk this over by ourselves."
"It's Laura all right," said Bettie. "Her hair's a lot lighter than it used to be and she's taller and much more elegant; but it's the same turned up nose and the same twisty shoulders and the same small eyes, too close together."
"And the same horrid mother," said Mabel. "What shall we do?"
"Let's not do anything," counseled wise Jean. "Let's wait and see if she recognizes us."
"Perhaps anybody as grand as that," offered Marjory, hopefully, "wouldn't _want_ to know plain blue serge folks like us. Of course we wouldn't exactly want the Highland Hall girls to think she was an old friend of ours--"
"She _wasn't_," said Mabel, emphatically.
"Well," argued Jean, "perhaps Laura has changed--certainly she has changed her name. It wouldn't be quite fair or kind for us to tell the other girls the things we know about her. We can wait until we have her by herself before we seem to recognize her. And maybe she has improved--"
"She needed to," said Marjory, sagely. "Shan't we even tell Henrietta?"
"I don't believe we need to," returned Jean. "Henrietta won't like her anyway. She's too--well, too cheap. She isn't Henrietta's kind, you know."
"The Milligans must have made money," said Marjory. "They hadn't any such clothes in Lakeville."
"Lakeville would have dropped dead if they had," giggled Bettie.
At first "Gladys" pretended not to recognize the little girls with whom she had once played in Lakeville; but, needing some one to show her the way to a class room, she waylaid Marjory in the hall and called her by name.
"Now, listen," warned Gladys, shifting her gum to the other side of her mouth. "Don't let anybody hear you calling me Laura. It isn't my name any more. I always hated that name and Milligan, too. Mother calls me Gladys--Gladys Evelyn de Milligan."
"What's the 'D' for," asked honest Marjory.
"That's French," explained Laura. "It's d e, _de_."
"It's more elegant that way," explained Laura, shifting her gum again. "We're society people now. It looks better in print when Mother's 'Among those present.' Now listen. Now that you know my name, see that you remember it. And tell those other Lakeville girls they can do the same thing."