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“Why not?” Louisa tossed her head of burnished curls, her green eyes glinting with a cool challenge that Ellen had come to dread. “I’m bored here and I’d like to see all the funny characters on this island of yours.”
“It’s not my island,” Ellen replied, her lips compressed. “And I don’t think they’d like being thought of as funny characters.”
“Don’t become all prim on me.” Louisa narrowed her eyes, lips pursed. “Don’t you want me to go with you?”
Ellen gazed at her friend, and knew two things. First, that Louisa had chosen her as her friend for shallow reasons at best, and manipulative ones at worst. And second, she did not want Louisa to come to Amherst Island. At all.
“No, I don’t,” she said after a moment. “Louisa, if you think Seaton is dull, you’d find Amherst Island far, far duller. There are no shops except for a little store that’s barely the size of my uncle’s broom cupboard, and the school is just one room that’s freezing in the winter. We take turns about who can sit closest to the wood stove.”
“Well, I won’t be there in winter.”
“Why do you want to go?” Ellen asked, desperation edging her voice now, for she had a terrible feeling that Louisa Hopper would not take to Amherst Island at all, and the islanders wouldn’t take to her. Her summer would be quite ruined.
“Why don’t you want me to go?” Louisa challenged, eyes snapping. “I’ll like it, I know I would.”
Ellen just shook her head. There was no point continuing this conversation, and besides she suspected that Louisa’s parents would not allow her to travel all day and night by train, to stay with relatives Aunt Ruth had made no secret of thinking questionable. She hoped as much, anyway. Desperately.
Still the whole question of Louisa’s friendship tugged irritably at Ellen’s mind as she set the table that afternoon, in preparation for the Hoppers’ visit.
Louisa was just spoiled, she told herself, not mean. At least not too mean. She’d teased Hope, but she’d made up with her afterwards and seemed genuinely sorry. She was impulsive, Ellen decided, and she liked to be entertained, for things to be jolly and fun. There wasn’t any harm in that, surely.
“I’m just a novelty to her,” Ellen murmured to herself as she laid the last crisply starched napkin on Aunt Ruth’s polished dining room table. “She’ll tire of me soon and move on to someone else.” Preferably before the summer arrived, and Ellen’s plans to return to the island were discussed.
The thought of Louisa abandoning their friendship brought a certain amount of relief, coupled with a twinge of disappointment. As silly and vain as she might be, Louisa was still the only friend she had at school.
Her eight months away, Ellen realized, had made her more of a stranger to Seaton than ever. No one seemed to know what to do with her, although they hadn’t before either. Ellen had a terrible feeling that no matter how much she changed, Seaton wouldn’t, and she would never fit in. No one would let her.
Aunt Ruth came into the dining room in her second best dress, her silvery blond hair swept up in a loose style recently made fashionable by the drawing of a Gibson Girl in Scribner’s.
“Haven’t you finished?” she asked, clucking her tongue.
“I have,” Ellen replied, and Aunt Ruth moved a napkin a half-inch to the left, frowning slightly.
There was a knock at the front door, and Aunt Ruth swept out of the room again. “Hamish, they’re here!”
Uncle Hamish came downstairs, having changed his collar and tie, his face shiny and red, and his expression as affable as always. Ellen felt a flutter of nervousness and wasn’t even sure why. She didn’t care about impressing the Hoppers. She suspected they were the sort of people who couldn’t be impressed, and yet...
She had a bad feeling that if anything—anything—went wrong this afternoon, the blame would fall squarely on her shoulders.
With a sigh she went to greet her aunt’s guests.
The first half hour of the visit went smoothly enough. Aunt Ruth led the Hoppers into the sitting room and they made polite and rather dull conversation while Louisa kicked her feet in a fit of obvious boredom and Ellen sat as straight and quietly as she could.
Mr. Hopper was a dapper man, his hair and the ends of his mustache slicked back with pomade, his suit the latest style. Mrs. Hopper looked much like Louisa, with her hazel and chestnut coloring, a great deal of powder on her nose to conceal what could only be described as freckles.
She smiled indulgently at her daughter, and then suggested in a sweet, girlish voice, “Why don’t the two young ones go out and play? Such talk as ours is sure to be deadly dull.”
“It is,” Louisa said sullenly, and Ruth’s lips compressed, her nostrils flaring in disapproval of such bad manners.
“Of course,” she said after a tiny pause. “Ellen, you may show Louisa your bedroom.”
There was nothing of interest to Louisa in that spartan chamber, Ellen was quite certain, but she rose from her place on the hard piano bench and led Louisa out of the sitting room.
“Let me see your dresses,” Louisa commanded when they were in her bedroom.
“I’ve only three,” Ellen replied dubiously. She was not going to show or even mention the red velvet dress still in its box under the bed. She was wearing her Sunday dress, another cut down from Rose’s, and the other two were plain and serviceable, having been worn many times to school.
“Is that all?” Louisa said incredulously, and favored Ellen with a look of real pity. “Your aunt’s so keen to impress us, I thought she’d have bought you five or six at least. She can get them right from the store, can’t she?” Louisa tossed her head. “Of course, I wouldn’t buy a store bought dress like that. Mama has my dresses made up by a seamstress, you know. She copies the styles from Paris and London.”
