“Oh, I know where they live,” interrupted Ada, “and I knew they were factory people anyway, and you wouldn’t want me going with girls like Alma.”

“I’d want you to be kind to her, of course,” returned Mrs. Singer.

“Then she’d have stuck to us if I had been.  I guess you’ve forgotten the way it is at school.”

Mrs. Singer sighed and opened her book wistfully.  “You ought to be kind to everybody, Ada,” she said vaguely, “but I really think I shall have to take you out of the public school.  It is such a mixed crowd there.  I should have done it long ago, only your father thinks there is no such education.”

Ada saw that in another minute her mother would be buried again in her story.  “But what shall I do about Frank and Lucy?” she asked, half crying.

“Why, is Frank in it, too?”

“Yes.  I know Lucy has been talking to him.  He came back and got her valentines.”

“Oh, pshaw!  Don’t make a quarrel over it.  Just be polite to Alma Driscoll.  They’re perfectly respectable people.  You don’t need to avoid her.  Don’t worry.  Lucy will soon get over her little excitement, and you may be sure she will be glad to make up with you and be more friendly than ever.”

Mrs. Singer began to read, and Ada saw it was useless to pursue the subject.  She left the room undecidedly, her lips pressed together.  All right, let Lucy befriend Alma.  She wouldn’t look at her, and they’d just see which would get tired of it first.

This hard little determination seemed to give Ada a good deal of comfort for the present, and she longed for to-morrow, to begin to show Lucy Berry what she had lost.

Meanwhile Alma Driscoll had hastened home to an empty cottage, where she threw herself on the calico-covered bed and gave way again to her hurt and sorrow, until she had cried herself to sleep.

There her mother found her when she returned from work.  Mrs. Driscoll had plenty of troubles of her own in these days, adjusting herself to her present situation and trying hard to fill the position which her old friend Mr. Knapp had found for her.  Alma knew this, and every evening when her mother came home from the factory she met her cheerfully, and had so far bravely refrained from telling of the trials at school, which were big ones to her, and which she often longed to pour out; but the sight of her mother’s face always silenced her.  She knew, young as she was, that her mother was finding life in the great school of the world as hard as she was in pretty Miss Joslyn’s room; and so she kept still, but her eyes grew bigger, and her mother saw it.

To-day when Mrs. Driscoll came in, she was surprised to find the house dark.  She lighted the lamp and saw Alma asleep on the bed.  “Poor little dear,” she thought.  “The hours must seem long between school and my coming home.”

She went around quietly, getting supper, and when it was ready she came again to the bed and kissed Alma’s cheek.