XI
THE PILGRIMAGE
The only person who seemed to disapprove of the intimacy between Amy and the three girls of the Barlow household was Fritz. It was hardly to be expected that a boy could be included in expeditions in which the girls would outnumber him, four to one. In fact, had he been regularly invited, Fritz would probably have declined to go about with a lot of girls. But he did resent the fact that Amy had been taken away from him. Whenever she could be spared from home, she was sure to go down to the beach, or over to Mrs. Barlow’s house, to spend an hour or two with Brenda. Really, it was unbearable! This at least was the point of view of Fritz, who began to feel rather aggrieved when on three successive days he had failed to find Amy at home when he called. On one of these occasions he had run upstairs to talk with cousin Joan, and he had found her equally dissatisfied. She did not see why Amy need be always going off for amusement. “I’m sure she has her books, and her piano, and when her mother is out, I am always here, so that she can’t say that she has n’t any one to talk to.” Poor cousin Joan! in all her life she had never been able to put herself in the place of any one else. She expected the other person, old or young,
