Page:Leah Reed--Brenda's summer at Rockley.djvu/57

Rh might break forth, and she felt that she would like the new Brenda to remain as she was for a time.

“You don’t object to spending the day with Frances while Belle is there, do you?” continued Brenda.

“Why, of course not. I like Frances and Belle very well at times. I did not really like the way Belle behaved last winter, and I don’t believe that I ’ll ever be  as intimate with her again. You see, Julia and Ruth have come to take her place, to a great extent. But I am sure that we can have a very jolly day at Nahant.”

Now the real state of things the past winter had been this: Brenda’s cousin Julia had come to Boston after the  death of her father, to live with Brenda’s parents,—her uncle and aunt.

As the two girls were near of an age, Mr. and Mrs. Barlow had expected them to be very congenial; but, to their surprise, Brenda was much less courteous toward her  cousin than they had expected her to be. She was unwilling to admit Julia to the charmed circle of “The Four,” which was made up of Nora, Edith, Belle, and herself. While she might have been unwilling to admit that she was jealous, she assumed that Julia felt a superiority to  her that her year and a half of seniority did not warrant. When she learned that Julia intended to go to College she became ridiculously angry. No girl of her set had ever gone to College, and Brenda, like many other girls of  fifteen, objected to having any one in her own family  depart from the ordinary routine. Belle, who was inclined to flatter Brenda, had by no means tried to lessen