I
came all this way and in all this dust and heat just to ask you to
forgive me. Will you?"

For the moment Virginia was nonplussed. But Florence only laughed,
clasped her hands somewhat affectedly and ran on, her words tumbling
out in helter-skelter fashion.

"Oh, I know. I'm spoiled and I'm selfish, and I'm mean, I suppose.
And, oh dear, I'm as jealous as anything. But I'm ashamed of myself
this time. Whew! You ought to have listened in on the party after you
left! If you could have heard mama scold me and papa jaw me about the
way I acted it would have made you almost sorry for me."

"But you weren't horrid at all," Virginia broke in at last, her heart
suddenly warming to this very obviously spoiled, futile, but none the
less likable, Florrie. "You mustn't talk that way. And if your
parents made you come. . . ."

"They didn't," said Florrie calmly. "They couldn't. Nobody ever made
me do anything; that's what's the matter with me. I came because I
wanted to. As the men say, I wanted to square myself. And, would you
believe it, this is the third time I have called. Mr. Struve kept
telling me that you had gone to see old Joe Ramorez . . . isn't he the
awfullest old pirate you ever saw? And the dirtiest? I don't see how
you can go near a man like that, even if he is dying; honestly I don't.
But you must do all kinds of things, being a doctor."

Her clasped hands tightened, she put her head of fluffy hair to one
side and looked at Virginia with such frank wonder in her eyes that
Virginia colored under them.

"And," ran on Florrie, forestalling a possible interruption, "I was
ready to poke fun at you last night just for being something capable
and . . . and splendid. There was my jealousy again, I suppose. You
ought to have heard papa on that score; 'Look here, my fine miss; if
you could just be something worth while in the world, if you could do
as much good in all of your silly life as Virginia Page does every day
of hers,' . . . and so forth until he was ready to burst and mama was
ready to cry, and I was ready to bite him!" She trilled off in a burst
of laughter which was eloquent of the fact that Florence Engle, be her
faults what they might, was not the one to hold a grudge.

"I am sorry," said Virginia, smiling a little, "if on my account . . ."

"You were just going to get cleaned up, weren't you?" asked Florrie
contritely. "You look as hot and dusty as anything. My, what pretty
ha