Anne Of Ingleside √ (Project K.)

CHAPTER 37

"Can I be your dearest friend this year?" asked Delilah Green, during that afternoon recess.

Delilah had very round, dark-blue eyes, sleek sugar-brown curls, a small rosy mouth, and a thrilling voice with a little quaver in it. Diana Blythe responded to the charm of that voice instantly.

It was known in the Glen school that Diana Blythe was rather at loose ends for a chum. For two years she and Pauline Reese had been cronies but Pauline's family had moved away and Diana felt very lonely. Pauline had been a good sort. To be sure, she was quite lacking in the mystic charm that the now almost forgotten Jenny Penny had possessed but she was practical, full of fun, sensible. That last was Susan's adjective and was the highest praise Susan could bestow. She had been entirely satisfied with Pauline as a friend for Diana.

Diana looked at Delilah doubtfully, then glanced across the playground at Laura Carr, who was also a new girl. Laura and she had spent the forenoon recess together and had found each other very agreeable. But Laura was rather plain, with freckles and unmanageable sandy hair. She had none of Delilah Green's beauty and not a spark of her allure.

Delilah understood Diana's look and a hurt expression crept over her face; her blue eyes seemed ready to brim with tears.

"If you love her you can't love me. Choose between us," said Delilah, holding out her hands dramatically. Her voice was more thrilling than ever . . . it positively sent a creep along Diana's spine. She put her hands in Delilah's and they looked at each other solemnly, feeling dedicated and sealed. At least, Diana felt that way.

"You'll love me forever, won't you?" asked Delilah passionately.

"Forever," vowed Diana with equal passion.

Delilah slipped her arms around Diana's waist and they walked down to the brook together. The rest of the Fourth class understood that an alliance had been concluded. Laura Carr gave a tiny sigh. She had liked Diana Blythe very much. But she knew she could not compete with Delilah.

"I'm so glad you're going to let me love you," Delilah was saying. "I'm so very affectionate . . . I just can't help loving people. Please be kind to me, Diana. I am a child of sorrow. I was put under a curse at birth. Nobody . . . nobody loves me."

Delilah somehow contrived to put ages of loneliness and loveliness into that "nobody." Diana tightened her clasp.

"You'll never have to say that after this, Delilah. I will always love you."

"World without end?"

"World without end," answered Diana. They kissed each other, as in a rite. Two boys on the fence whooped derisively, but who cared?

"You'll like me ever so much better than Laura Carr," said Delilah. "Now that we're dear friends I can tell you what I wouldn't have dreamed of telling you if you had picked her. She is deceitful. Dreadfully deceitful. She pretends to be your friend to your face and behind your back she makes fun of you and says the meanest things. A girl I know went to school with her at Mowbray's Narrows and she told me. You've had a narrow escape. I'm so different from that . . . I am as true as gold, Diana."

"I'm sure you are. But what did you mean by saying you were a child of sorrow, Delilah?"

Delilah's eyes seemed to expand until they were absolutely enormous.

"I have a stepmother," she whispered.

"A stepmother?"

"When your mother dies and your father marries again she is a stepmother," said Delilah, with still more thrills in her voice. "Now you know it all, Diana. If you knew the way I am treated! But I never complain. I suffer in silence."