would just as soon hear her as Mrs. Channing.”
“It wouldn’t do any good if you did ask her,” said Olive significantly. “Soon after we began planning this concert, back in April, I met Irene in town one day and asked her if she wouldn’t help us out. She said she’d love to but she really didn’t see how she could when Rilla Blythe was running the program, after the strange way Rilla had behaved to her. So there it is and here we are, and a nice failure our concert will be.”
Rilla went home and shut herself up in her room, her soul in a turmoil. She would not humiliate herself by apologizing to Irene Howard! Irene had been as much in the wrong as she had been; and she had told such mean, distorted versions of their quarrel everywhere, posing as a puzzled, injured martyr. Rilla could never bring herself to tell her side of it. The fact that a slur at Walter was mixed up in it tied her tongue. So most people believed that Irene had been badly used, except a few girls who had never liked her and sided with Rilla. Rilla, however, did not get much comfort out of their sympathy for it was barbed by subtle reminders of other days when she had fought Irene’s battles with these very girls and snubbed them because they did not idolize her. And yet—the concert over which she had worked so hard was going to be a failure. Mrs. Channing’s four solos were the feature of the whole program.
“Miss Oliver, what do you think about it?” she asked in desperation.
“I think Irene is the one who should apologize,” said Miss Oliver. “But unfortunately my opinion will not fill the blanks in your program.”
“If I went and apologized meekly to Irene she
