Meanwhile on that Saturday morning Bea and Lila, silent and shy, had crowded with their two hundred classmates into chapel. The two friends sat side by side. Lila was in terror of making some horrible blunder that might overwhelm her with a vast indefinite disgrace. She leaned forward in the pew, the pencil trembling between her fingers, the blood pounding in her ears, while from the platform in front a cool voice read on evenly through page after page of names. And then at last the tragic despair of finding that she had jotted down herself for two sections in English and none in Latin! When she managed to gasp out the awful situation in Bea's ear, that young person looked worried for full half a minute. It was a very serious thing to be a freshman. Then her cheery common sense came to the rescue.
"Never mind. We'll go up and look the lists over after she has finished them all."
"Oh, can we? Will you truly go with me?" Lila drew a quick breath of relief and gratitude. This was one of the precious privileges of having found a friend. She gazed at Bea with such an adorable half-wistful, half-joyful smile on her delicate face that Bea never quite forgot the sensation of realizing that it was meant wholly for her. The memory of it returned again and again in later days when Lila's exacting ways seemed beyond endurance. For Lila's nature was one of those that give all and demand all and suffer in a myriad mysterious ways.
On the afternoon of that Saturday when Bea skipped up the narrow tower stairs to invite Lila to go to the orchard to gather a scrapbasket full of apples, she discovered the door locked. In answer to her lively rat-tattoo and gay call over the transom, she heard the key turn.
Bea started to dash in; then after one glance stopped and fumbled uneasily with the knob. In her happy-go-lucky childhood with many brothers and sisters at home, tears had always an embarrassing effect.
"Let's--let's go to the orchard," she stammered. "It's lovely, and the fresh air will help your--your headache." She had a boyish notion that anybody would prefer to excuse heavy eyes by calling it headache rather than tears.
Lila pointed to the bed which was half made up.
"Why didn't you tell me?" she demanded in agonized reproach. "I thought the maids attended to the beds here. I left the mattress turned over the foot all day long, and the door was wide open. Everybody in the neighborhood must have looked in and then decided that I was lazy and shiftless. They believe that I have been brought up to let things go undone like that. They do, they do! Miss Merriam just the same as said so. She poked in her head a minute ago and said, 'Heigho, little one, time to make up your bed. It has aired long enough and the maid is not expected to do it.' She said that to me! Oh, I hate her!" Lila caught her breath hard.