“After all, it is nice to look nice,” she confessed to Clover.

Excepting going to the dressmaker’s there was not much to amuse the girls during the first half of vacation.  Mrs. Page took them to drive now and then, and Katy found some pleasant books in the library, and read a good deal.  Clover meantime made friends with Clarence.  I think his heart was won that first evening by her attentions to Guest the dog, that mysterious composite, “half mastiff and half terrier, with a touch of the bull-dog.”  Clarence loved Guest dearly, and was gratified that Clover liked him; for the poor animal had few friends in the household.  In a little while Clarence became quite sociable with her, and tolerably so with Katy.  They found him, as Mr. Eels said, “a bright fellow,” and pleasant and good-humored enough when taken in the right way.  Lilly always seemed to take him wrong, and his treatment of her was most disagreeable, snappish, and quarrelsome to the last degree.

“Much you don’t like oranges!” he said one day at dinner, in answer to an innocent remark of hers.  “Much!  I’ve seen you eat two at a time, without stopping.  Pa, Lilly says she don’t like oranges!  I’ve seen her eat two at a time, without stopping!  Much she doesn’t!  I’ve seen her eat two at a time, without stopping!” He kept this up for five minutes, looking from one person to another, and repeating, “Much she don’t!  Much!” till Lilly was almost crying from vexation, and even Clover longed to box his ears.  Nobody was sorry when Mr. Page ordered him to leave the room, which he did with a last vindictive “Much!” addressed to Lilly.

“How can Clarence behave so?” said Katy, when she and Clover were alone.

“I don’t know,” replied Clover.  “He’s such a nice boy, sometimes; but when he isn’t nice, he’s the horridest boy I ever saw.  I wish you’d talk to him, Katy, and tell him how dreadfully it sounds when he says such things.”

“No, indeed!  He’d take it much better from you.  You’re nearer his age, and could do it nicely and pleasantly, and not make him feel as if he were being scolded.  Poor fellow, he gets plenty of that!”

Clover said no more about the subject, but she meditated.  She had a good deal of tact for so young a girl, and took care to get Clarence into a specially amicable mood before she began her lecture.  “Look here, you bad boy, how could you tease poor Lilly so yesterday?  Guest, speak up, sir, and tell your massa how naughty it was!”

“Oh, dear! now you’re going to nag!” growled Clarence, in an injured voice.

“No, I’m not,—­not the least in the world.  I’ll promise not to.  But just tell me,”—­and Clover put her hand on the rough, red-brown hair, and stroked it,—­“just tell me why you ‘go for to do’ such things?  They’re not a bit nice.”

“Lilly’s so hateful!” grumbled Clarence.

“Well,—­she is sometimes, I know,” admitted Clover, candidly.  “But because she is hateful is no reason why you should be unmanly.”