"And are _you_ the Little Colonel!" she cried.

"From what Elizabeth said, I thought she was pretty near an angel!" Fidelia's tone implied more plainly than her words that she wondered how Betty could think so.
A cutting reply was on the tip of Lloyd's tongue, but the sight of her face in the mirror checked it.

She only said, pleasantly, "Betty is certainly the loveliest girl in the world, and--" "There she is now!" interrupted Fidelia, nodding toward the door as voices sounded in the hall and footsteps came out from the office.
"Oh, they'll be so surprised!" said Lloyd, looking back with a radiant face as she ran toward the door.

"We came two whole days earlier than they expected!" Fidelia heard the joyful greeting, the chorus of surprised exclamations as Lloyd flew first at Betty, then at Eugenia, with a hug and a kiss, then turned to greet her Cousin Carl.
"Betty will never look at me again," Fidelia thought, with a throb of jealousy, turning away from the sight of their happy meeting, and beginning to strike soft aimless chords on the piano.

"I wish I were one of them," she whispered, with the tears springing to her eyes.