"I think, Delia," said the governess, as Nan was about to go upstairs, "if you have an ax, or something of the sort, I'll try to unbox my bicycle."
Nan came to an abrupt halt. Bicycle! The word went through her with an electric thrill, and sent her blood tingling. Then she dragged herself unwillingly away. What had she to do with the bicycle of a woman she hated.
"O Nan!" Miss Blake exclaimed, before the girl's lagging footsteps had carried her halfway up the staircase, "I'm sure your strong young arms can help us with this big elephant. Will you lend a hand?"
Now could the governess have suspected that that was precisely what Nan had been longing to do? But she could not have lingered unless she had been given the excuse by Miss Blake herself. Had the request been made to serve as that excuse?
Nan did not stop to question. She came flinging down stairs, two steps at a time, and Miss Blake and Delia smiled above her head as she bent down, wrenching and tugging with her main strength at the boards and stubborn nails, too excited to know that half the force she used would have served her better.
"There! that's my bicycle!" announced Miss Blake, displaying the beautiful machine with the pride of a possessor, when the last stay had been unscrewed, and the slender wheel stood revealed in all the glory of its spotless nickel-plate and rubber tires.
Nan gazed at it in speechless admiration. It had been the dream of her life to own such a machine, but she had pleaded for one in vain. Mr. Turner had explained to her that what money he held in trust for her was no more than served to pay for her running expenses.
"You know your father is not a rich man," he had said, "and lately he has met with losses. He wishes you to be brought up under home influences rather than at a boarding-school among strangers. He desires you to be well educated, and naturally all this costs. Your father is willing to make many sacrifices that you may be well provided for, but he is not able to indulge you in a matter like this of the bicycle. I wish I did not have to refuse you, but I think with him, that your most important need should be supplied first, and if after that little remains for mere indulgence, you must be satisfied. By and by you will see that his course is best, if you do not see it already."
But Nan had never been able to feel that it was best that she should not have a bicycle. Now that the new governess had come and had proved so "horrid," she felt it still less. "Half the money she gets would buy me a first-rate safety," she had thought often and often and often, as she groaned over her father's perversity.
But here was one of the wonderful affairs actually in the house, and if it did not belong to her, what of that? What was it the governess was just saying?
"I am quite sure you could use this wheel if we should shift the saddle up a bit, that is, if you care to ride. As soon as the ground is clear I will teach you if you like."
Nan's face was radiant. "Oh, I know how," she said. "I've practiced lots on—on—a person's I know. Only it wasn't a—a—girl's wheel. But I can ride."
Miss Blake was rubbing down the slender spokes with a piece of chamois skin.
"You are welcome to use mine, then," she said simply.
Nan choked out a meagre "Thank you." It was not a gracious acknowledgment, but the governess accepted it, and really felt a glow of satisfaction in having called out even so much as an acceptance of her favor from her arbitrary young charge.
"Small favors thankfully received," she thought with a smile at her own humility.
Nan stood leaning against the wall with her hands behind her, watching the manoeuvres of the leathern rag as it flashed up and down the nickel spokes and around and about the hubs, guided by the dexterous hand of the little governess.
"Yes, I think we can pass many a jolly hour on this machine," resumed Miss Blake, "after the ground is clear of snow, and after we are clear of our lessons. We'll begin our studies on Monday, Nan. That will be commencing with the new week, and we must be very conscientious about our work before we indulge in any play."
"There!" thought Nan, with a rush of antagonism, "I might have known she'd make some kind of a fuss before she'd let me use it. I guess she's sorry she promised in the first place, and wants to kind of back out of it. Oh, well, I might have known. Now she'll pile on lessons and things till there's no time for anything else. That's her way of getting out of it."
But she made no comment. She stood kicking her heel against the surbase, silently watching the sparkling machine. Presently she turned and stalked upstairs without a word.
Delia gave Miss Blake an apologetic glance, but the governess composedly rose, and, stowing her property safely away against the closet wall, closed the door upon it and with a kind word to the woman beside her went upstairs as though nothing had happened.
She knew what was in Nan's mind. She could read it as distinctly as if the sudden wrinkles on her forehead and the quick set of her obstinate jaw had been printed text.
"Poor child!" thought the governess, "how she hates study and—me. How she rebels against restraint. So she thinks I am trying to take back my word. No wonder that makes her furious."
She went into her room and closed the door, but after a moment she came back and opened it again.
"Nan might feel shut out," she said to herself, and so she left it standing invitingly ajar that in case the girl cared to come in she would not have to knock. She smiled to herself as she did it. She knew well enough Nan would not care to come in. "Still there might be a chance!"—she left the door open on the chance.
The more Nan thought of Delia's baseness the more she inwardly raged against it. She sat in her own room with her feet over the register and munched caramels and nursed her grievance all the afternoon. Delia was miserable. She had tried by every means in her power to win at least a look from the girl, but all her attempts were repelled and she was treated with an overbearance that cut her to the quick. At last she could stand it no longer. She left her work and went upstairs "to have it out with Nan" and be done with it.
She knocked repeatedly at her bedroom door, but the girl obstinately refused to utter the word of admittance. Delia was not to be daunted, however, by this, and at last, turning the knob, she walked boldly in and confronted Nan squarely.
"See here, Nan," she began without waiting, "I want to know what's the matter with you that you treat me so? Me that has waited on you hand and foot and tended you night and day since you was a little baby?"
The girl did not deign to raise her eyes from her book—or else they were so rapidly filling with tears that she did not dare to do so.
Delia gulped. "Can't you answer a civil question?" she faltered, trying to be firm and failing utterly.
Nan cast her book to the floor and sprang up to face the woman with blazing cheeks and eyes that flashed angry fire.
"You'd better ask me what's the matter, Delia Connor!" she burst out in a trembling voice. "As if you didn't know! Do you s'pose I'll bear everything? It's bad enough—your being such an awful turn-coat! You went over to her side the first thing, and every time she bosses me you just stand there and let her do it and never say a word. You let her order me about like everything and never stand up for me a bit. Her—a perfect stranger! Somebody you never saw in all your life before! But that isn't the worst of it! Do you s'pose I'm going to stand your coming to my door and listening at the key-hole when I was rehearsing and then going and telling on me—telling her all I was going to do to her, I'd like to know? You just wanted to get on the right side of her, and it was the meanest thing I ever heard of in all my life. You came and peeked at me when I was rehearsing and then went and told her, and I s'pose you both laughed and had a fine time over it. You thought you were very smart, didn't you? But you got there too soon, Delia Connor, for I had made up my mind I wouldn't do it, so there! But now you've both been so mean, I don't care who knows what I was going to do. I hope you told her that I don't want her here. I hope you told her every bit of that thing I learned by heart on purpose to recite to her. I hope you repeated every word of it. It's true and I hope she knows it. I hope—"
"For the land's sake, Nan, do be still," broke out Delia at last after a dozen futile attempts to stem the tide of the girl's anger. "I didn't listen nor peek nor anything, and you scream so loud she'll hear every word you say. You—now be quiet and let me speak—you walked in your sleep last night. You went into her room and said off a whole lot of balderdash to her—enough to set her against you for the rest of her life—if she ever finds out you really meant it."
Nan gave Delia an imploring, frightened look.
"Delia," she gasped, breathlessly, "do you—do you think she heard?"
Delia shook her head.
"Couldn't say for the life of me," she replied. "Her door may have been open when I came up; I didn't notice."
Nan looked the picture of dismay. "Wait a minute!—I'll go see!" she whispered earnestly, and tip-toed noiselessly into the hall. A second later she returned, radiant with reassurance.
"Her door is tight shut, and she's making so much noise inside her room she couldn't possibly have heard. Sounds as if she was dragging trunks around or something."
"Perhaps she's packing to go 'way," suggested Delia, with a grain of malice.
Nan fairly jumped with—well, if it wasn't joy it was something equally as moving in its way. "Oh, no, no!" she cried, in a sudden fever of excitement. "I don't want her to leave—like that. Just think how awful it would be to have her leave—like that! Can't you go to her and say I'm—you're good friends with her. Delia, won't you please go and tell her I didn't really mean to say off that speech at her. I learned it before she came, and I meant to recite it, but when I found that she was different—so little and kind of—different, I thought it would be mean to do it, and I gave it up. Do go and tell her, Delia, please, and oh, won't you hurry?"
"Now see here, Nan," interposed the woman. "Our best plan is to wait and see what she is going to do. If she hasn't heard, it's all right, and telling her would only put the fat in the fire. On the other hand, if she has heard and is packing up to go 'way, why, it wouldn't do much good, I'm afraid, to try to stop her. With all being such a lady and so gentle in her ways, she's got a mind of her own—I can see that—and you won't be like to get her to change it. But she'll tell you good-bye before she leaves, she's too much of a lady not to, no matter how she feels, and then you can say your say, and I promise you faithful I'll back you up."
Nan saw the wisdom of Delia's counsel, and tried to content herself to wait. But the suspense of every minute was awful, and she felt herself growing frenzied under the strain. After a time the commotion in the next room ceased, and all was quiet as the grave. "She's getting on her hat now," gasped Nan. "She'll go away and think I'm a heathen and all sorts of horrid things. And she hasn't got any friends or folks of her own, and no house to go to but this. And I s'pose she's awfully poor, because she wouldn't be a governess if she wasn't, and oh, dear! I don't want to have any one be a beggar, and turned out of the only roof they've got over their heads on my account. That's what makes me feel so bad, Delia. That's the only thing. If she will go on her own account I'll—I'll be glad, but—oh, she mustn't go this way!"
Delia turned away her face to hide a smile.
"There's nothing to do but wait," she insisted. "If I go in there and tell her, and she hasn't heard, why it would only give you away; don't you see?"
Nan let herself down in her rocking-chair with a dismal drop. "O dear!" she cried, "I never saw anything like it! The way things go wrong in this house! It's just perfectly horrid! I wish I was with my father, I do so! I guess it's nicer in India than it is here, anyway; and I'm sick and tired of living cooped up in this old stuffy place. So there!"
Delia dusted some imaginary dust off the table with the corner of her apron, and went down stairs to finish up her work.
In the street below the huckster was yelling "Chestnuts! Fresh-roasted chestnuts!" The little charcoal oven in his push-cart sent out a shrill, continuous whistle, and Nan had an impulse to throw something at him. What business had he to come here and make such a racket that she couldn't hear what was going on in the next room. He passed slowly down the street, his call and the whistle of his oven growing fainter and fainter, and finally fading quite away as he disappeared in the distance. Nan pricked up her ears. Surely the sounds she heard were those of moving feet in the next room. Back and forth they went, now nearer, that was to the closet, now further away again, that must be to the bureau. What could the governess be doing? The lid of her trunk was dropped, and Nan could distinctly hear the click of the catches as they fell in place. There was no further doubt about it! Miss Blake was going. A moment later, and before Nan could collect her wits, the door of the next room was briskly opened and closed, and the governess, hatted and cloaked, sped quickly from the house.
Nan flew to the balusters with a hasty cry upon her lips, but was just in time to see the door swing heavily to; and that was all. She flung herself down stairs two steps at a time.
"There now, Delia Connor," she cried, bursting into the kitchen with such vehemence that the very tins rattled on their shelves. "There, now! What did I tell you? She's gone—Miss Blake's gone. Trunks packed—! Everything's packed! She'll send men to get them. She's gone clean off. I told you what it would be, and you wouldn't go and speak to her. And now my father will be disgraced, and Mr. Turner will blame me, and—it's all your fault, and I'll tell my father; so there!"
Delia's face paled suddenly. She set her lips together tight.
"It's well you have some one to lay the blame on, child!" she said shortly, and went upstairs without another word. Nan did not care to follow her into the governess' room, but stood outside and waited to hear her verdict when she should have examined the premises.
"Well?" asked the girl, eagerly, as soon as she came out.
"Her trunk's shut and locked, that's certain!"
"Then she's gone for good!"
"She's gone. There ain't a doubt about that!"
"You said she would surely say good-bye, Delia Connor, you know you did. You said no matter how she felt, she was such a lady she'd be certain to say good-bye!"
"Well, and I really thought so. I believe now she'd have said good-bye, if—"
"If I hadn't been such a—brat? Say it right out, Delia! You mean it and you might as well say what you think," broke in the girl bitterly.
Delia turned on her heel and stalked grimly down stairs. A second later she heard a rush of flying feet behind her, and the next moment two arms were locked about her neck.
"Poor old Delia," cried Nan, in one of her sudden bursts of remorse. "I'm the horridest girl that ever lived! I know it as well as you do, and if you weren't the patientest thing in the world you wouldn't stand it for a minute. But don't you go away from me too, Delia! Please don't! Honest Injun, I'll try to behave! Cross my heart I will. And I tell you this much, I feel just awfully about Miss Blake. I shouldn't wonder a bit but it would snow tonight, and she hasn't a place to go and no money, and—O dear! I feel like a person that ought to be in jail!"
Delia extricated herself gently from the clinging arms. "What makes you think Miss Blake's as poverty-stricken as that?" she asked.
"Oh, I don't know," responded the girl. "But I just feel she is. And she is so little too. She looked so glad to get into this house that I guess she never had much of a place to stay before."
"She don't dress like a person that's next-door to a beggar," mused Delia.
"No, she doesn't. She has really pretty things, hasn't she? But I guess they're made over and cast-off, or something. Maybe the lady she lived with last gave them to her?" speculated Nan.
"Maybe she did," said Delia.
The two made their way slowly down to the kitchen. It was beginning to grow dark and the dinner must be prepared.
"I never in all my life saw such little hands and feet," the girl pursued. "And she's dreadfully particular about them. There's never a speck on her fingers that she doesn't run right up and scrub them, and she wears the cunningest slippers I ever saw."
"I guess she comes of nice folks," said Delia, as she began to peel the potatoes.
"Wonder why she doesn't stay with them then?" put in Nan.
"Perhaps they're dead."
Nan pondered. Her own motherless life had given her a very tender sympathy for those whose "folks" were dead. For the first time she felt sorry for Miss Blake. She was uneasy and distressed. It made her shift about uncomfortably in her chair.
"Goodness me!" she ejaculated impatiently at last, and then one of her wild impulses took possession of her and she ran frantically up into her own room and flung on her coat and hat.
"The whole thing's as plain as preaching. Why didn't I think of it before?" she said to herself, with a shake of impatience. "Mr. Turner told Miss Blake if she was worried or anything to go to him. She hasn't any money, and she's left here, so of course that's where she is. I'll go and bring her back."
The front door opened and shut with a bang, and Nan was out in the street alone. As she scudded down the pavement the electric lights suddenly gleamed out pale and vivid from their lofty globes, and sent wavering shadows flashing across her path.
"It's pretty late and it'll be dark as a pocket in a little while," thought she; but that did not detain her, and she raced on, putting block after block between her and home in her ardor to make reparation and to lighten her heart of its weight of compunction.
Nan knew the way to Mr. Turner's house perfectly, though she had not been able to give Mrs. Newton the street and number. She was observing and clear-headed, and could have been trusted to find her way about the entire city alone, but her father had often cautioned Delia and the girl herself against putting her power to the test, and so it happened that until now she had never been any considerable distance away from home after twilight without a companion. The way was perfectly familiar to her—but it had never seemed so interminably long. She could have taken a car, but in her haste to get off she had forgotten her pocketbook. She saw the "trolleys" fly past her in quick succession, and it seemed to her they whizzed jeeringly at her as they sped. She was by nature so fearless that even if the street had not been thronged she would not have been afraid. As it was she was only alarmed lest she would get to Mr. Turner's and find Miss Blake gone.
She hurried on breathlessly, fairly skipping with impatience and wondering what explanation she could give the lawyer in case the governess had not told him the real reason of her departure. Somehow it flashed into Nan's mind that Miss Blake would not expose her. She was busied with this reflection as she turned off the broad, well-lighted thoroughfare into the dimmer side-street upon which Mr. Turner lived, and she ran up the steps of his house with the question still unsettled. It was not a moment before the door was opened to her and she was admitted to the warm, luxuriously furnished drawing-room. It was Nan's ideal of a house: "all full of curtains and soft carpets and beautiful things." She seated herself before the burning log-fire with a sensation of deep well-being—only it was a little over-shadowed by her worry about the governess.
"Well, my little lady, and what brings you here at this time of day?" was Mr. Turner's greeting, as he strode across the room to meet her.
"O Mr. Turner!" began Nan, bluntly, "I came to see you about Miss Blake. I want to know—I wonder if you—"
"Indeed! And how is that charming lady? You must tell her I had hoped to see her before this, but I have been unusually busy, and every moment has been taken up. Now tell me, isn't it as I said? Hasn't she completely won your heart? Aha! I see she has! I see she has!"
Nan flushed and stammered, and did not reply. Inwardly, she was in a turmoil. Either Miss Blake had not come here at all or the lawyer was trying to baffle her. And if Miss Blake had not come here, then where was she? A sort of dumb terror took hold of the girl and shook her from head to foot.
"You see I was right," pursued the lawyer, cheerfully. "I knew you would surrender to her the first thing. Every one does. I think I never knew any one who was more universally loved. Now, how can I help you, my dear? Give you some extra pin-money to buy Miss Blake a Christmas present, eh? Is that it?"
Nan caught at the suggestion eagerly as being a way out of her difficulty, and nodded a gulping assent.
"Well, you needn't have traveled all this distance for such a simple matter, my dear," he assured her genially. "And after dark, too! A note would have served, you know; a note would have served. But I'm glad you like her so well, and you shall have the money at once. Your father would be delighted I am sure."
It was only after Nan had been gone some time that Mr. Turner remembered with a start that she was alone and that it was night. It was too late then to overtake her, so he had to resign himself with the thought that the girl was admirably self-reliant, and that her way lay almost entirely along well-lit and busy avenues.
The thought of danger did not occupy Nan for a moment. Her only fear now was for the governess. If she wasn't at Mr. Turner's, then where was she? She asked herself this question over and over again. The girl blushed as she thought of the untruth she had been guilty of in implying that the lawyer's suggestion had been her motive in coming to him. She sharpened her pace, as if to outstrip the memory of her misdeed, but it, with her other worry, seemed to pursue her, and presently her imagination so quickened at the thought that she actually fancied she heard some one behind keeping step with her. She broke into a brisk run. Clap! clap! came the sound of hastening feet behind her. With a sort of tortured courage she slackened her pace. Whatever was following her also took a slower gait. She cast a furtive look over her shoulder and gave a horrified gasp as her eyes squarely encountered two other eyes, which were fixed upon her own in an insulting leer from beneath the rim of a rakish felt hat which was worn tilted on the side of a very unprepossessing head. The eyes, bad as they were, proved the best feature in a thoroughly vicious face, and for the first time in her life Nan felt frightened—chokingly frightened. She would have rushed on, but a stealthy hand held her back.
"Don't try to run away from me, little lady!" said an unsteady voice in her ear in a tone that was intended to seem engaging. "Don't try to run away from me, if you please. I wouldn't hurt you for the world, no, indeed."
Nan shook herself free from the disgusting touch and hurried on without a word. Her hateful shadow kept abreast with her.
"You ain't afraid of me, are you?" he asked reproachfully.
Nan made no response. Her feet seemed to cling to the pavement. Every time she lifted one it was with an effort.
"Oh, come now," whined the voice in her ear, "don't go on like this. I ain't going to hurt you. I'm only a poor man who would be grateful for a penny or two. By the way, where's your pocket-book?"
Nan leaped suddenly aside, and as she did so she missed her footing, and a cry of pain burst from her lips. A sharp pang shot from her ankle to her knee, and when she tried to take another step she found the darting agony returned. But stop she could not. Her face grew gray and lined with misery as she dragged forward, saving her injured ankle as much as she could, but always having to torture it intolerably with every onward limp. Her persecutor caught up with her promptly, and she cast beseeching looks for deliverance on every side, which the hurrying, preoccupied crowd was too intent on its own affairs to see. If only she could see a policeman! She knew what she would do. She would make believe she was going past him and then suddenly veer about and say, "Officer, this man is annoying me!" and before he had time to realize what she had done the rowdy would be arrested. But no policeman was in sight, and her fine scheme could not be carried out. Suddenly in the midst of her agony of mind and body her heart gave a wild bound of unspeakable relief.
"Miss Blake! Miss Blake!" she almost shrieked.
"Nan!"
The little governess was beside her in a flash, her own face almost as white and seamed as the girl's.
The little governess was beside her.The little governess was beside her.
The little governess was beside her.The little governess was beside her.
"O Miss Blake! this man—make him go away; make some one send him away. He's annoying me—and my foot!"
The governess grew if possible a shade paler. "What man?" she demanded sharply, "Where?"
Nan could not speak. She indicated with a mute gesture. Miss Blake looked behind her, but if there had actually been such a man as the girl described he must certainly have taken to his heels. They were standing alone in the midst of the hurrying crowd.
"O Nan!" cried the governess, not stopping to argue the question, "where have you been? Delia and I have been frantic with worry. She is out now hunting for you. She went one way and I another."
Nan could not reply. The torture in her ankle grew fiercer with every movement. She shook her head silently and limped on.
"You are hurt! You are in pain!" cried Miss Blake, now for the first time really realizing her condition.
Nan nodded dumbly.
"Take my arm; no, lean on my shoulder! There, that's better! Bear down as hard as you can and use me as your crutch! I'm strong. I won't give out."
And a right good support she proved. Happily they were but a stone's throw from home, and it was not long before Nan was comfortably settled on the library lounge, luxuriously surrounded by all sorts of downy cushions and having her injured ankle bound in soothing cloths by the tenderest of hands. Delia, full of sympathy and the desire to help, was bustling about nervously, tripping over bandages and upsetting bottles of liniment, but meaning so well all the while that one could not discourage her.
"It is only a strain. You have turned your ankle badly and the muscles have been wrenched, but I don't think it is an actual sprain," said Miss Blake, consolingly. "However, if the pain is still bad to-morrow, we'll have a doctor in to look at it. Do you still have Dr. Milbank, Delia?"
Nan sat bolt upright with surprise.
"How funny!" she cried. "However in the world did you know Dr. Milbank was our doctor? Why, we've had him for years and years. Ever since I was born and before, too. But how could you know?"
Delia hurried out of the room muttering something about the dinner, and Miss Blake bent her head over the bandage she was rolling.
"He lives so near," she replied haltingly.
"I've seen his sign often as I passed and—and—perhaps that is why I thought he might be your physician. He's so convenient—within call. It is hard to tell what makes one jump at conclusions sometimes."
Nan sank back among her cushions not half satisfied. "Dr. Pardee lives near, too. Just as near as Dr. Milbank does," she persisted.
The governess made no response, and just then Delia came staggering in under the weight of a huge brass tray which she bore in her arms.
Miss Blake jumped to her feet. "We're going to have a dinner-party up here to-night, Nan," she said. "Won't it be fun?" and she set to work unfolding a strange foreign-looking stand that Nan had never seen before and upon which Delia carefully placed the tray.
"Why, what a dandy little table it makes!" exclaimed Nan, admiringly. "Where did it come from?"
"I brought it from London, but it was made in India," explained Miss Blake.
Nan's eyes softened. "Where papa is!" she murmured softly to herself. "You have lots of nice things," she added, after a moment. "These pillows are downright daisies. I s'pose they belong to you."
The governess served her with soup. "They are yours whenever you care to use them," she returned in her quiet way.
"It's jolly having dinner up here," said Nan, not quite knowing how to respond to such a generous offer.
"Yes, isn't it?" assented the governess.
"Mrs. Newton don't use her basement for a dining-room, and neither does Mr. Turner. I wish we didn't. I think it would be perfectly fine if we could have ours up here, too."
"Why couldn't you?"
The girl leaned forward with a look of real interest in her face.
"Do you think we might?" she asked eagerly.
"I don't see why not. The books might be shifted to the other room. This might be re—well, re-arranged, and I'm sure it would make a charming dining-room."
"But that ugly old glass extension back there!" protested Nan in disgust. "Who wants to look at a lot of old trunks and broken-up things when one is eating? If we could only pull it down."
Miss Blake considered a moment.
"Why not take all the old trunks and broken-up things out entirely and make a conservatory of it. It faces the south. Plants would grow beautifully there."
Nan clapped her hands. "Why, that's perfectly splendiferous," she cried. "I never should have thought of it. I say, Miss Blake, let's do it right away, will you? I love flowers."
"Would you take care of them?" demanded the governess with a thoughtful look.
"Uh-huh!" nodded Nan, heartily. "I guess I would!"
"Very well, then," returned Miss Blake encouragingly, "I'll think about it. Perhaps Delia wouldn't consent. You know there is no dumb-waiter in the house, and if she had to carry up all the dishes at every meal, it would more than double her work."
Nan's face fell. "O dear!" she complained. "What a horrid old house! Can't do a single thing with it! It would have been such fun to change everything about!"
Miss Blake laughed. "Oh, if that was all your reason for wanting the improvements," she retorted. "I thought you wanted to gratify your sense of the beautiful."
"Well, I do," declared Nan.
"Then we'll see what can be done," and the governess set down her glass of water with a very knowing smile.
After dinner was eaten and Delia had carried away the tray and Miss Blake removed the wonderful folding stand, the governess looked up suddenly and said with unusual gravity:
"Nan, while I am here I hope you will never run out after dark alone again. It is dangerous. Do you understand me, my dear?"
The girl's eyes dropped. Yes, she understood perfectly. When the governess spoke in that low, decided voice it would have been hard to mistake her meaning.
"I had to go to-night," Nan answered, in a suddenly sullen voice.
"If you had waited a few moments I could have, and most willingly would have, gone with you. Never hesitate to ask me. I am always at your service. That is what I am here for."
Nan hesitated. "I—I thought you had gone away—for good," she stammered, lamely.
Miss Blake flushed. "What made you think I had gone away for good?" she asked, slowly repeating the girl's words.
Nan shook her head and gulped.
"I was in my room," continued the governess, after a pause, "and I heard—"
Nan put out both hands. "I know it! I know it!" she gasped. "But I didn't mean what I said—I didn't, honestly and truly. Before you came I learned it off, and I meant to say it, but that was before I saw you. I feel different now, and I hope—I hope—"
Miss Blake's hand was laid quietly on hers. "Wait a moment, Nan. Don't go on till you know what I was going to say. You seem to be trying to explain something that perhaps you might regret later. You think I overheard something you would rather I did not know? What I was going to say is this: I was in my room this afternoon and I heard a man crying 'Chestnuts!' It carried me back to the time when I was a little girl and used to roast them in this very—" she hesitated, then added slowly, "town. So I went out to buy some, that we might have a little jollification together with nuts and apples and perhaps a cookie or two, if Delia would give them to us. That is why I went out."
Nan twisted her fingers and looked down. "And I went out because you did," she faltered. "I thought you had gone away, and I went to Mr. Turner's to bring you back—if you would come. Say, now, didn't you hear what I said to Delia? I was awfully mad, and I guess I spoke out loud enough so folks on the next block could have heard. Honest now, didn't you?"
Miss Blake did not answer at once, and Nan could see that a struggle of some sort was going on in her mind. When she raised her face her eyes were very grave.
"Yes, Nan, I did hear!" she confessed, honestly.
The girl's cheeks blazed with sudden shame.
"And yet you weren't going to leave?" she said. "You were only going to do a kindness to me?"
Miss Blake shook her head.
"Dear Nan," she answered, smiling wistfully, "a good soldier never runs away for a mere wound. He stays on the field until he has won his battle or—until—he is mortally hurt. I do not think you will ever wish to cut me as deeply as that, and so—and so—I will stay until—the general orders me off the field. The day I hear that your father is to come back, that day I will resign my position in this house. Until then, however, you must reconcile yourself to my presence here, and I think we should both be much happier if you would try to do so at once, my dear."
The strain Nan had given her ankle proved more serious than either she or Miss Blake had expected. It threatened to keep her chained to the sofa for days to come, and the girl's only comfort lay in the thought that now, of course, the governess would not force the question of study, and after she was up and about again she might be able to dispose of it altogether, and save herself any more worry on that score.
But Monday came, and, true to her word, Miss Blake appeared in the library after breakfast with an armful of school-books, to which she kept Nan fastened until luncheon time. It was perfectly clear that there was no escape. Miss Blake was armed with authority, and the girl knew herself to be under control. She fretted against it so persistently that if the governess had not had an enduring patience she must have despaired over and over again under the strain of Nan's sullen tempers, fierce outbreaks, and lazy moods. There were moments when the girl seemed to be fairly tractable, but there was no knowing when the whim would seize her to fall back into her old ways, so that, at the best of times, Miss Blake did not dare relax her control. Then Nan would kick her heels sulkily, and comfort herself with the thought that when her father came home all this would be put an end to. Miss Blake would go. Hadn't she said so herself? And that would finish up this studying business quick enough. She could cajole her father easily into letting her stay away from school, and then—here she would be, as happy as you please, with only those two, Delia and her dear daddy, to look after her, and no one at all would say no to anything she might choose to do. It was a blissful prospect. In the meantime there were lessons, and—Miss Blake.
But after a few days Nan found that, somehow, the lessons were not so hard after all, and she never would have believed that they could be so interesting. While as for Miss Blake—Well, a woman who sits reading "Treasure Island" and such books to one for hours together can't be regarded entirely in the light of a nuisance.
"I never knew geography was so nice before," Nan admitted one day after lessons were over. "I used to hate it, but now, why it's downright jolly! I never saw such beautiful pictures! Where in the world did you ever get so many?"
"I took them myself!"
Nan's eyes widened. "Why, have you been to all these places?" she asked, not a little awe-struck.
Miss Blake confessed she had.
"And you took all these photographs your own self?" persisted the girl.
The governess laughed. "I'm like George Washington, Nan," she said. "I cannot tell a lie! I did them with my little—Kodak!"
Nan fairly gulped. She would have said "Jiminy!" but she knew Miss Blake disapproved of "Jiminy!" and somehow, she was willing to humor her just now.
"Only," went on the governess, "it isn't a little Kodak at all. It is a very fine camera indeed. Some day, if you like, I will show it to you, and then, perhaps you will be interested enough to care to learn how to take some photographs yourself."
Nan bounced up and down on the sofa with delight. "Oh, won't I, though!" she exclaimed feverishly. "Just won't I!"
"But mind you, my dear," warned Miss Blake. "If you once undertake it, I want you to persist. It is not to be any 'You-press-the-button-and-we-do-the-rest' affair. I want you to learn to finish up your work yourself. Do you think you will care to take so much trouble?"
Nan nodded energetically.
"Very well, then. So it stands. If you are willing to learn I'll gladly teach."
"Who taught you?" asked the girl curiously.
Miss Blake shook her head. "Just a man whom I paid for his trouble," she returned simply. "I wanted to learn, and so I went into a gallery and got some experience, and then came away and experimented on my own account. It has taken me years, and I am still working hard at it, for I believe in never being satisfied with anything less than the best one can do."
Nan blinked. She herself believed in being satisfied with whatever came easiest, unless it was in the way of some sport, where she liked to excel.
"How jolly it must be to travel about—all over the world," said she, musingly. "When I'm grown up I guess I'll be a governess, or a companion, or something, just as you are, and get a place with some awfully nice people who will take me everywhere. Was it nice where you were before you came here? Were there any girls? Why did you leave?"
Miss Blake looked troubled, but Nan was not used to noticing other people's moods, and did not even stop to hear the replies to her own questions. "If you've been all over the world, you'll know where my father is, and can tell me about it. Oh, do, do! Show me some pictures of India, won't you please? Just think, I haven't seen my father for two years, and he won't be home until next autumn—almost a year from now. You ought to see him! He is the best man in the world—only I guess he is lonely, because my mother died when I was a baby, and he hasn't any one to keep house for him but Delia and me. Mr. Turner says he has lost a lot of money lately, too. I guess that's why he went to India. If I had been older he would have taken me. But he had to leave me here with Delia. Delia has been in our family, for, oh, ever so many years. She first came to live here when my mother was a young girl. She says it was the jolliest house you ever saw. My grandfather and grandmother were alive then, and mamma had a young friend, who was an orphan, who lived with them. They loved her just as if she had been their own child, and she and my mother were so fond of each other that—well, Delia says it was beautiful to see them together. And such times! There were parties and all sorts of things all the time till, Delia says, it was a caution. My grandfather wasn't very well off, and lots and lots of times my mother wouldn't have been able to go to the parties she was invited to, if it hadn't been for that friend of hers, who used to give her the most beautiful things—dresses, and gloves, and all she needed. She had loads of money, and every time she got anything for herself she got its mate for my mother. Don't you think that was pretty generous?"
Miss Blake bit her lip. "One can't judge, Nan," she said. "If your mother shared her home with this girl and she had money and your mother had not, I think it was only right that they should share the money too. No, I do not think it was generous."
Nan tossed her head. "Well, I think it was and so does Delia," she retorted hotly.
"It is easy enough to give when one has plenty," pursued the governess, almost sternly. "But when one has little and one gives that—well, then it is hard and then perhaps one may be what the world calls generous, though I should call it merely grateful."
Nan did not understand very clearly. She thought Miss Blake meant to disparage her mother's friend, the woman she had been brought up to think was one of the noblest beings on earth. She felt angry and hurt and almost regretted that she had confided the story to her since she made so little of her heroine's conduct.
"I don't care; I think she was perfectly fine and so does Delia. My mother just loved her and I guess she knew whether she was generous or not. When she went away my mother was wild. She cried her eyes out. But she married my father soon after that, and then—well, my grandmother died and then my grandfather, and I was born and my mother died and—O dear me! it was dreadful. Delia says many and many a time she has gone down on her knees and just prayed that that girl would come back, but she has never come and she won't now, because it is years and years ago and maybe she's dead herself by this time. Do you think Delia would have prayed for Miss Severance to come back if she hadn't been the best and most generous girl in the world?"
Miss Blake smiled faintly. "That settles it, Nan!" she declared. "If Delia wanted her back she must at least have tried to be good. And even trying is something, isn't it? And now, how do you think luncheon would taste?"
Nan was more than ever inclined to be sulky. Her loyalty was touched. Not alone did Miss Blake fail to appreciate her heroine, but she showed quite plainly that she did not want to hear about her. "All the time I was talking she fidgeted around and looked too unhappy for anything. I guess she needn't think she's the only one in the world that can make people love her. I don't think it's very nice to be jealous of a person you never saw. Pooh! I like what she said about trying to be good. I guess Delia knows," said Nan.
They ate their luncheon together in the library, and after they had finished Miss Blake excused herself and went upstairs to prepare to go out.
"After being in the house all the morning one needs a change," she said, "and it would be a sin to spend all of this glorious day indoors."
Nan sighed. How she longed to get away herself. But of course that was impossible, with this old troublesome ankle bothering her. If she could not step across the room, how could she hope to get into the street? O dear! When would it be well?
Miss Blake was tripping about upstairs and Nan could hear her singing as she went. Delia was up there, too. When Delia walked the chandelier shook.
"She follows Miss Blake about so, it's perfectly disgusting," thought the girl resentfully. "Now, I wonder what she wants in my room. I don't thank either of them for going poking about my things when I'm not there, so now! Well, I'm glad she's coming down, at any rate."
The governess appeared in the library a moment later, but Nan could scarcely see her face, she was so overladen with wraps and rugs. She turned the whole assortment into a chair, and before the girl could ask a question, she found herself being bundled up and made ready for the street.
"What are you doing?" she gasped out at length. "You know I can't walk."
"Nobody asked you, sir!" quoted the governess, gayly.
"Then what are you putting on my things for?"
"Ready, Delia?" sang out Miss Blake, cheerfully.
Nan heard the front door open. Then heavy steps came clumping along the hall, and in another moment she was being borne down the outer steps and set comfortably in a carriage by the good old Irish coachman, Mike, from the livery stable round the corner.
"Are you comfortable?" asked Miss Blake, with her foot on the step. "Have you everything you need?"
Nan nodded, and the governess, taking her place beside her, motioned to Michael, who climbed to his seat on the box, and off they drove.
"There is Delia at the window! Let's wave to her!" cried Miss Blake, with one of her happy girl-hearted laughs.
It seemed to Nan that she had never seen the Park look as beautiful as it did to-day. To be sure, most of the trees were bare, but the naked branches stood out delicate and clear against the blue of the violet-clouded sky and by the lake-shore the pollard willows were gray and misty, and a few russet maple trees still held their leaves against the sweeping wind. They saw numberless wheels spinning along the smooth paths, and though the governess said nothing, Nan knew she had given up this chance of a ride for her sake.
Impulsively she put out her hand and laid it on Miss Blake's.
"If it weren't for me you'd be on your wheel now, wouldn't you?" she asked.
"Yes," came the answer, prompt as an echo. "But as it is I'm not on my wheel, and it so happens that I'm doing something that gives me much more pleasure."
"If I had a bike it would make me simply furious to have to give up a ride such a day as this," said Nan.
"Then isn't it rather fortunate you haven't one?" asked Miss Blake, saucily. "But seriously, Nan, why haven't you one?"
Nan set her jaw. "My father can't afford it," she said proudly.
The governess turned her head to look at a faraway hill, and there was an embarrassing little pause. When she faced about again Nan could see that her chin was quivering, and in a spirit of tender thoughtfulness quite new to her, she hastened to change the subject since Miss Blake felt so badly about having asked the question.
"This is the lake where we skate in winter," she said. "That is, most of the girls come here. I go to the Steamer. I like it better."
The governess looked at it and asked, absently, "Why?"
"Oh, because its jollier there. Most of the girls I know—I don't know—that is, they don't know me; they don't like me much, and I'd rather not go where they are. John Gardiner and some other boys and I go to the Steamer and have regular contests, and it's the best sport in the world."
But Miss Blake was not listening. She was thinking of other things, and only came back to a sense of what was going on about her when Nan gave a great sigh to indicate that she was tired of waiting to be entertained. The governess roused herself with a smile and an apology and began at once to chat briskly again.
"Whenever you want Michael to turn you have only to say so," she said. "What do you think of going down-town and buying some jelly or something for little Ruth Newton. We could stop there on our way home, and you could send it up with your love."
Nan nodded heartily. It always pleased her to give. She enjoyed, too, the thought of getting a glimpse of the shop-windows, which were already beginning to take on a look of holiday gorgeousness. So down-town they went, and Miss Blake not alone bought the jelly, but so many other things as well, that presently Nan began to have a feeling that for such a poor woman the governess was inclined to be extravagant.
She told Delia so when they were alone together that evening, Miss Blake having gone upstairs to write some letters.
"Oh, I guess you needn't worry," the woman said.
"But you don't know how many things she bought," persisted Nan. "I'm sure she can't afford it. Just think, a woman that works for her living the way she has to! But do you know, Delia, I believe there's something mysterious about her, anyway. She seems to see right into your mind—what you're thinking about; and every once in a while she lets out a hint that the next minute she looks as if she wished she hadn't said. I've noticed it lots and lots of times, and I'm sure she's trying to hide something. What do you s'pose it is? What fun it would be if she were a princess in disguise."
"Well, she ain't," Delia almost snapped. "She's just a good little woman that's trying to do her duty as far as I can make out, and if she spends money you must remember she has only herself to support."