"Is Nan in?" asked Ruth, coming to the house one day in the very teeth of a blinding snowstorm, and putting the question to Delia with a very decided note of excitement in her voice.
"Yes, she's in; but she's pretty busy," replied Delia, showing the guest into the dining-room, where the bright logs were blazing cheerfully in the fireplace, and where Miss Blake, enveloped in a huge apron, was kneeling before the hearth and polishing its tiles till they shone like gems. She stopped to welcome the guest in her own hearty, informal fashion.
"O Ruth! come in and sit down. I wondered who could be brave enough to face a storm like this. Why, it is almost a blizzard. Take off your things, dear, and get warmed. You won't mind my going on with my work?"
"Oh, no! not at all. Please don't stop. Thank you. This is as comfortable as can be. But then, one always is comfortable here. I came to see Nan about something important. She's busy?"
"Yes, in her room. But if you don't mind waiting a little I think she will soon be able to come down," responded the governess genially.
"Then I'll sit here, if you don't mind," and the girl settled herself in an engulfing armchair with a sigh of satisfaction, her eyes following Miss Blake from place to place as she tripped briskly about, energetically wielding her dust cloth and whisk broom and humming contentedly as she worked.
"Perhaps you won't approve of the plan that I've got in my mind, and won't let Nan go into it," ventured Ruth, presently.
"I can't fancy you suggesting anything that I would so seriously disapprove of as that," returned Miss Blake, smiling kindly, but asking for no further enlightenment on the subject than her guest was inclined to give of her own accord.
"Well, then, it's this: If the cold weather lasts we'll have elegant sleighing, with all this snow, and I want to hire a sleigh, just any common old thing will do, and fill it with straw, and all of us girls and boys go off on a screamingly fine sleigh-ride. If it clears we'll have a full moon, and I think it would just be the jolliest thing in the world. Now please say Nan can go. She'll love to I know, and she always makes things snap so," pleaded the girl, fixing her eyes on Miss Blake's face with a peculiar intensity of expression.
The governess hesitated.
"Oh, please say she can," reiterated Ruth.
"My dear Ruth, I can't say anything until I know more of the matter. You say you girls and boys are to go. What girls and boys do you mean?"
"Why, Lu and Grace and Mary and the Buckstone girls, of course; and John Gardiner and Harley Morris and Everett Webster, and oh! all those fellows—the ones in our set; you've met them all."
"And is there to be no grown woman in the party—no chaperone?" suggested Miss Blake.
Ruth looked down and began picking a thread from the thumb of her glove.
"Oh, of course; mamma wouldn't let me go unless there was a chaperone," she replied after a moment, but tamely, with the ring all faded out of her voice.
"No, I am sure she would not," the governess remarked dryly.
"I thought of you at once," Ruth began again with an upward glance that however did not meet Miss Blake's eye. "But then we all thought that it would be too much to ask of you—to ride all those miles with a noisy crowd in the cold and night, and—so on, and so—so—just before I came here I ran into Mrs. Cole and asked her to chaperone us, and she said she would."
The governess laid her duster on a chair, and unbuttoned her apron very deliberately.
"Mrs. Cole," she repeated half-aloud, as if speaking to herself, and her tone had something in it that seemed to call for some sort of justification from Ruth.
"You know she's just been married, and she's as full of fun as she can be. And she likes a good time immensely, and loves to be with us girls, and it won't bore her a bit to go, and it's ever so much better to have her than—than—some one who wouldn't enjoy it, you know."
"Is Mr. Cole to be of the party?" Miss Blake inquired, still with that odd inflection.
"Why, no," responded Ruth, twisting her handkerchief into a hard knot. "There won't be room for him. But Mrs. Cole said it didn't matter in the least. She says she often goes off and leaves him, and he has just as nice a time sitting home with his cigar and a book or something."
"They have been married, I think, three months," Miss Blake commented half to herself.
"Yes, about," replied Ruth. "And Mrs. Cole is just as gay and jolly as she ever was. You may think that it isn't very dignified for a married woman to—"
"Oh! my dear Ruth," interrupted the governess hastily, "I am not disparaging Mrs. Cole, and I have no right to express an opinion concerning her conduct, but I think—yes, I am quite sure that I prefer Nan not to join your party."
Ruth jumped from her chair with a cry of protest: "O Miss Blake! Don't say that! Think of it, we're going to drive down as far as Howe's and have a supper and it will be such fun. We want Nan awfully. She's just the best company in the world, and if she doesn't go it will be—well, it will be too bad. Do please say she may."
Miss Blake shook her head somewhat sadly. "I can't say so, Ruth. There are special reasons why Nan ought not to go—reasons that I can only explain to her, but which I am sure she will understand. You other girls have your mothers, but Nan has none, and that means that she has no protector, now that her father is absent, unless I can stand in such a relation to her. Believe me, I do not voluntarily deny Nan any pleasure, but there are some instances in which I must."
"But it's going to be perfectly proper," Ruth insisted, almost in tears. "You don't think my mother would let me go if it wasn't going to be perfectly proper, do you, Miss Blake?"
The governess stood before the fire and rested her arm on the high mantel-shelf, tapping the fender lightly with the toe of her slipper. At Ruth's question she turned her head quickly from the flames toward the girl with a compassionate smile.
"No," she hastened to declare, "I am sure your mother would not let you go to anything that she knew to be in any respect not altogether as it should be."
There was just the shade of an emphasis on the word knew—just the merest breath of a pause before it. Miss Blake gazed frankly and fearlessly into the girl's eyes as she spoke, and Ruth's lids dropped suddenly as if she had been trying to look at the sun and it had blinded her.
There was a pause and in it they could distinctly hear Nan's feet going to and fro on the floor above their heads, and her sharp young voice shouting the chorus of some tuneless popular air, in her own perfectly cheerful, earless fashion.
"Oh, Miss Blake, please!" quavered Ruth.
If she had known the governess as well as Nan did she would have known that it was worse than useless to "tease." As it was, she was aware of some force here that did not appear in her own easy-going mother, and unconsciously she bowed to it—but even as she did so she gave a last wail of entreaty from pure force of habit.
"Please, Miss Blake!"
"No, Ruth. I can't consent to Nan's joining you. If she goes, it will be in direct defiance of my authority and against my wish and approval. But when she hears what I have to say I do not think she will go."
"Don't think who will go?" demanded an eager voice, as Nan came pelting in at the door, having flung down stairs in such a whirl that they had scarcely realized she had started before she was here.
"Heyo, Ruth! When did you come? You're a dear girl to venture out a day like this! Who'll go where, 'you don't think,' Miss Blake?"
Ruth rose and began dragging on her gloves. "Hello," she said, blankly, in return for the other's greeting.
"Who'll go? Who'll go?" insisted Nan, tapping the floor with her foot to emphasize her impatience.
Ruth looked at Miss Blake a little sullenly, and said nothing. Miss Blake looked at Nan.
"You," she returned simply. "I was just saying to Ruth that I am sure you would not go anywhere against my plainly expressed wish."
The girl threw back her head with an unrestrained laugh.
"Oh, now, you're bragging!" she cried breezily. "Don't count too much on me. I'm a queer creature. I don't know what I'd do if I were hard put!"
Ruth glanced at Miss Blake again as she buttoned her coat. The governess' face was quite placid, but there was an expression in her eyes that was quite new to the girl and that she did not care to face.
"The fact of the matter is, Nan," Miss Blake explained, "Ruth has come here to invite you to join a sleighing party to be given—what night did you say, Ruth?"
"The first clear one," responded the girl still sullenly.
"The first clear night," resumed Miss Blake. "All your friends are going, and it would give me as much pleasure to have you join them as it would you to do so, but—under the circumstances it is impossible to do anything save—" she paused an instant, and Nan broke in impatiently:
"Under what circumstances? There aren't any circumstances! A sleighing party! Why, it'll be just magnificent and gorgeous! Of course I'll go. Hurrah! Ruth, you're a dear to ask me! Go? Well, I should think so!"
Ruth fastened her fur boa about her neck, and murmured something almost inaudible about having to hurry home.
"Well, you can count on me," cried Nan, flinging her arm about her friend's waist and escorting her to the door. "Good-bye! Thanks heaps for asking me! Las' tag!"
The front door slammed, and the girl came back to the library with her cheeks aglow and her eyes flashing. "What fun!" she exclaimed. "I know what we'll do! We'll go down to Howe's and have a supper and a jolly good time generally. Mary Brewster and Grace and Ruth had it all planned out for the next good snow, and I'd forgotten. O goody!"
Miss Blake was standing as they had left her, by the fire, with her foot upon the fender and her hand upon the high mantel-shelf. Now she took them both down and turned to Nan, saying in a low, controlled voice:
"Nan, I want to talk to you about this party. And you must hear me out, even if some of the things I am about to say do not please you." She kept her eyes on the girl's face as she spoke, and saw its expression change quickly from one of eager anticipation to one of growing apprehension and then again to one of dogged opposition. So vivid were these changes that she almost lost the necessary courage to go on, for she read in them that her task promised to be no easy one.
"Well?" said Nan, tapping her foot impatiently, as Miss Blake did not at once continue.
"Please sit down here, and I will try to say what I have to say as quickly as possible," resumed the governess, drawing a long breath.
Nan obeyed, but with a decidedly impatient fling of herself upon the low ottoman Miss Blake had indicated.
"As I said to Ruth," the low voice commenced, "under almost any other circumstances it would give me the greatest pleasure to know that you were to enjoy this sleighing party with the others. If Mrs. Andrews or Mrs. Hawes were going it would settle the question at once."
"Or if you were," suggested Nan, with a curl other lip.
Miss Blake's face paled, and for an instant she regarded Nan in a sort of surprised, hurt silence. Then she replied, steadily: "Yes, or if I were. But as it is Mrs. Cole, the case is entirely altered. Mrs. Cole is scarcely more than a girl herself, and—I say this to you, Nan, simply because I must—she has never been, to my idea, a lady-like young woman. She has always been flippant and frivolous and boisterous; anything but a good companion for a number of impulsive, impressionable girls like yourself."
"Oh, pshaw!" interrupted Nan, impatiently. "There's nothing against her at all. She's lots of fun, and a body'd be a great goose that tried to suit all the old frumps in town. She said so herself, and she's married and she knows."
A ghost of a smile flitted across Miss Blake's face. Nan's emphasis reflected so directly on her own condition of unauthoritative spinsterhood.
"If you and the other girls have no more careful a chaperone, one who will be no more of a restraint than Mrs. Cole, I am afraid the party will prove a rather uproarious one. And I cannot help thinking that this is precisely the reason Mrs. Cole has been asked to attend you; that you might not be under any restraint. I don't for a moment think any of you girls would deliberately take advantage of your liberty, but you are full of animal spirits, and when you get in full swing it is a little hard, perhaps harder than you know, to rein yourselves in. I am afraid Ruth has not been quite candid with her mother. At all events, I am sure that if Mrs. Andrews realized the circumstances she would think twice before letting Ruth go. It is not only that I think Mrs. Cole will not prove a restraint; I am afraid she will intentionally lead you on. And if she does, I am afraid your sleigh-ride will be decidedly unconventional."
"I hope we'll have a splendid time," announced Nan, setting her jaws with a snap of her teeth.
But the governess went on as if she had neither seen nor heard.
"It is very important, Nan, that you especially should not be identified with anything of the sort. It might injure you in such a way that the harm could never be repaired." She paused and Nan straightened herself with a jerk.
"I'd like to know why it's more important for me than for the other girls? If their mothers think it's good enough for them I guess it's good enough for me, and if they can be trusted I guess I can."
Miss Blake hesitated, but only for a moment. Then she went on steadily and firmly, but without the least suggestion of sternness in her voice or manner.
"The reason is simply this: You have not had the advantages the other girls have had. You have had no mother; no careful, loving training from the first, and—excuse me, dear—your behavior has shown it. How could it be expected not to do so? People have criticized you, and their criticisms have been severe, unjust even. Lately you have set yourself right with most of your neighbors, but it has been hard work, and it has been only begun. It will still be hard work to keep their good opinion. If you want to hold a place in their esteem you must earn it and keep on earning it. The other girls might do with perfect safety what you could not dream of doing, because in them it would be looked on merely as a single slip; with you it would be backsliding. Do you understand me, Nan?"
There was no reply, but the girl's bent head was answer enough. Miss Blake passed her hand tenderly over the roughened hair, and for a long time there was silence between them. Nan was thinking, and Miss Blake was content to let her think.
The tall clock in the corner tapped out the minutes with slow, even ticks. The fire burned steadily on the hearth, and the logs settled as they burned. Outside the high wind raced madly around bleak street corners, carrying the snow before it in white, blinding clouds. The air was so full of the swirling, eddying flakes that it dimmed the light and made evening seem to have settled down long before its usual time. Every now and then there came to them from the conservatory a faint, faint breath from a blossoming daphne, as though the delicate thing were breathing out sweet gratitude for its shelter from the storm.
Nan could not help responding to the quieting influence of it all. It was very, very different from the place as it used to be, and she felt the difference and the suggestiveness of it more now than she had ever done before.
Suppose the change in herself was as marked as this? Every one seemed to like her nowadays. They said she was altered and improved, and if they said so, she supposed it must be true. What, then, if she were to turn about and be her old self again?
What if Miss Blake were to give the house its old aspect again? Ugh! It was disheartening even to think of such a thing. But granting that she were to let things go back, she couldn't undo some of the improvements she had made? So it seemed reasonable to Nan that even if she let herself be as she had been for awhile, just to rest from the constant trying to be good, for a day or so, the really important changes must still remain; like the dumbwaiter and the wall paper and the frescoes and the woodwork. And, pshaw! Just going to this sleigh-ride wasn't going to prove that she was backsliding, anyway! Miss Blake was too particular—making an awful fuss over nothing. Mrs. Cole was all right enough. Lots of nice people knew her, and the girls always liked to have her around, she was so gay and jolly. And now that she was married, it was fun to have her chaperone them, for she never interfered, nor was wet-blankety, like mothers and people, no matter what was going on. In fact, she often urged them on and suggested things the girls themselves would never have thought of, so that wherever she was the fun promised to run high. It was too bad of Miss Blake to have put the case as she had. It simply meant that if Nan went she deliberately disobeyed her wish and defied her authority.
For the first time the girl seemed to get a glimpse of the tactful, tender way in which she had been guided. She saw that this was the first instance in which she had been put under definite restraint. Always before Miss Blake had left her seemingly to decide for herself, and she had never been aware of the influence that led her in the right direction.
But this was different. This was discipline, and she rose against it instantly.
If she did not go on the sleigh-ride she would only be obeying Miss Blake's injunction. There was no credit or virtue in that. There might be some satisfaction in denying one's self a pleasure if one felt one were independent, and that what one did was self-abnegating and laudable. But if one acted under compulsion—! Pooh! Nan guessed Miss Blake thought she was a mere child to be ordered about like that.
And yet, with all this, there was a strange unfamiliar tugging at her heart to confess herself willing to obey. She actually had to make an effort to keep from doing so. She scarcely knew how it happened, but all at once she became conscious that she had shaken herself together and that she was saying, in no very gracious voice to be sure, but still that she was saying, "Well, if you will have it your own way, you will I suppose. There! I promise you I won't go on the sleigh-ride. Now, does that satisfy you?"
Miss Blake took her hand from Nan's hair so hastily that the girl lifted her head in astonishment. But the governess had neither the air of being angry nor of being wounded as she feared. She simply rose and said in quite a matter-of-fact tone as she turned toward the door:
"I demanded no promise of you, Nan, and I give you back your word. Moreover, I entirely recall my injunction. Do as you please. If you decide to go you will neither be disobeying my order nor breaking your own promise. You are quite free and untrammeled, my dear."
Nan sprang to her feet.
"Huh!" she cried in an exasperated manner, "I know what you mean! You mean I am quite free to go and—take the consequences. That's what you mean."
Miss Blake paused but made no reply.
"But suppose there aren't any consequences?" pursued Nan, biting her lip and scowling darkly from between her knitted brows.
Miss Blake turned her head.
"There are always consequences," she said over her shoulder in a voice that was very low and serious.
The storm lasted for three days and then came a term of perfect weather. Under foot the snow was packed hard and tight into a compact mass over a bed of ice, and overhead the sun shone out from a cloudless sky, while the air was so keen that it kept the mercury very close to the zero mark even at midday.
"How is this for high?" demanded Ruth exultantly, as she and Nan met toward the end of the week, the first time they had seen each other since that stormy day when the subject of the sleigh-ride had first been broached to Miss Blake.
"The weather, you mean? Oh, perfectly fine!" responded Nan.
Ruth drew a step nearer to her.
"It's all arranged for to-night. Not a soul has refused; every one we've asked is going, and the sleigh is a regular old ark. We've got everything our own way. Mike, from the stables, is as solid as a brick wall. The horses are perfectly safe and we're going to have footstoves to keep our toes warm. Mrs. Cole has telephoned down to Howe's to have our supper ready, and we're going to have a simply stunning time."
Nan tried to smile, but failed, and Ruth was too full of her own affairs to notice.
"We're going to start at eight sharp. First we thought we'd pick up the party as we went along, but Mrs. Cole said it would waste too much time, so we're all going to meet at her house. I've so much on my mind my head's spinning. Be sure you're on hand at eight. We're not going to wait for any one."
"O Ruth!" faltered Nan, flinging out a detaining hand as the girl was about to go. "I'm not going. Didn't I tell you?"
Ruth stopped short and gazed at her in bewilderment.
"Not going! What on earth do you mean?"
"I can't go; that's all," stammered Nan, flushing hotly at the seeming weakness of the confession.
Ruth stared at her blankly.
"Well, I like that!" she enunciated at length.
"Why, I told you, didn't I?" asked Nan.
"Told me what? That you weren't going? Well, I should say not. Miss Blake said you couldn't but you said flat down you would, and, of course, I believed you. Don't you remember the last words you said as I went away that day were that I could count on you? And so, of course, I counted."
Nan stood and regarded the snow at her feet in silence.
"It's right-down mean to back out at the last minute when the party's all made up and the couples all arranged and you've given your word. We've been awfully careful whom we've asked, because we only wanted a certain kind—not alone a certain number. Of course, we could get lots of girls to take your place and jump at the chance; but we prefer you, and you'd given your promise."
Nan ground the snow under her foot until it squeaked.
"I thought you were sick, or something, when you didn't come around," went on Ruth, sternly. "I never imagined for a minute it was because you meant to flunk and leave us in the lurch like this. If I'd thought that I wouldn't have gone to all the trouble I did to save you a place next to John Gardiner when Mary Brewster was fighting tooth and nail to get it."
The pinched snow squeaked again under Nan's grinding heel, this time louder than before.
"It's all nonsense, Miss Blake's not wanting you to go," pursued Ruth. "Everything is as proper as pie, and if the boys get to carrying on a little too much Mrs. Cole will settle them in no time. She's real determined when she makes up her mind. What under the sun does Miss Blake think we are going to do? But that's no matter now. You gave me your word, and you've no right to go back on it. Besides, it'll set us all topsy-turvey with our accounts, for if you don't go of course you won't turn in your share of the tax, and we couldn't ask any one at the last minute just to come as a make-shift and expect her to pay for the privilege. The end of it will be the rest of us will have to make it up, and if you think that's fair I don't!"
"I'll gladly pay my dues," returned Nan, more meekly than Ruth had ever heard her speak. "You can ask any one you choose as my substitute, and say anything you please to explain my not going, and I'll stand by you."
This began to sound serious, and Ruth felt it was time to clinch her argument.
"If you go out Louie Hawes will, too. Her mother said she'd let Lu go if Miss Blake would let you, but that if Miss Blake objected she thought it would be best not to have Lu join. She said she made Lu's going entirely conditional on yours. So, you see, if you back out you'll not alone be breaking your promise, but you'll be breaking up the party and making a mess of it all round. I told Mrs. Hawes you were going, and Lu's heart is set on it. If she has to stay back now, at the last minute like this, it will disappoint her dreadfully, and I wouldn't blame her if she never spoke to you again."
Nan felt that she had been driven into a corner, and that there was but one way out of it. In spite of her strong desire to go with the girls, she had determined to stick to her resolve to stay behind. She had hardly known why she had tried to avoid them all these days. But now she knew. It was because she was afraid they would shake her resolution. Once she would have called herself cowardly for trying to spare herself such temptation, but now she knew better; she saw she had been simply wise. It would not have been brave, but merely reckless, to have done otherwise. She had known ever since Miss Blake spoke that she was free to do as she pleased. That she was held by no promise; that she was compelled by no stronger claim than Miss Blake's disapproval, which might be, after all, only a groundless personal prejudice, she thought. She hardly realized why she felt bound to obey. And now along came Ruth to prove that there were other claims outside Miss Blake's. She remembered perfectly having said that Ruth could count on her. Here was a very definite promise, although it had been made in half-ignorance, and she understood clearly that Ruth meant to make her keep it. Then, again, she was directly responsible for Louie's disappointment, and this seemed to her, as Ruth had intended it should seem, a compelling conclusion. If she had been older her reasoning would not have stopped here, but, as it was, she perceived only two sides to the question, and this that Ruth had just presented seemed infinitely more convincing than the one Miss Blake had tried to make clear to her. Ruth's logic she could understand; the governess' seemed vague and incomprehensible. In one case she had been coerced into making a promise from which she had later been absolved; in the other she had given her word of her own free will, and she was being stoutly held to it. There were other influences at work, but Nan did not know it. She honestly believed she was waiving all considerations but those with which her duty was concerned, and she thought she had done so when she broke out with a sort of impatient groan:
"Oh, dear! I never saw such a tangle!"
"Well," returned Ruth grimly, "I don't know anything about that, but whatever it may be, I've got the strong end of the line and I mean to hold it. You've just got to go and that's all there is to it."
Nan gave a rueful laugh. She more than half-liked to have Ruth leave her no alternative. It somehow made her seem less responsible to herself. If the decision were taken out of her hands she could not be held accountable and—the enjoyment would be there all the same.
"I wish you'd let me off, Ruth," she protested weakly, as a sort of last sop to her conscience.
Ruth saw that she had prevailed and gave her head a triumphant toss. "Well, I won't, so there! And what's more I can't stand here wasting time like this another minute. I have a hundred things to do before eight o'clock, so good-bye! Be sure you're on time for we won't wait a second, and if you don't arrive none of us will ever speak to you again, so there!"
Nan stood dumbly stubbing her toe into a little mound of snow quite a minute after Ruth had left her. She had not even glanced up when, in response to her friend's last declaration, she had said, "Very well; I'll be on hand," and her voice had sounded so flat and lifeless that Ruth thought it better to hasten off before the words could be recalled. When Nan spoke in that half-hearted tone Ruth had no faith in her strength of purpose. She walked home in a doubtful frame of mind, wondering if, after all, the promise would be kept.
But Nan had no such misgivings. She knew perfectly well that she was "in for it" now, but, strange to say, she felt no exultation in the prospect.
"Oh, dear!" she snapped out peevishly, with a last vicious dig of her heel into the snow, "every bit of enjoyment is taken out of it, I never saw anything so provoking, in the whole of my life. If Miss Blake only hadn't been so mean, I might have been spared all this fret and bother and been just as jolly as any of them. But how can a person have a good time when they know there's some one at home pulling a long face and making one feel as if one were breaking all the laws. It's just too bad, that's what it is."
But Miss Blake neither "pulled a long face" nor by any other means tried to impress Nan with a sense of her disapproval. She took her decision quietly, and made no comment upon it one way or the other. But when it neared dressing time, and the girl had gone to her room to prepare, she tapped gently for admittance and came in, bearing in her hand a coquettish sealskin hood which she generously offered to Nan, saying:
"It's bitterly cold, and I know you won't want to tie a comforter about your ears. If you will wear this I shall be only too happy to lend it to you. See, the cape is so full and deep your chest and back can't get chilled, and it is not at all clumsy, as so many of them are. Try it on. I think it will be becoming and I know it will keep you warm."
Nan was at a loss for words. Miss Blake had none of the air of heaping coals of fire on her head, but just for a second the girl suspected her of it and hung back reluctantly. Then she looked into the frank, honest eyes and all her suspicion vanished.
"You're—you're awfully kind," she stammered, hastily.
"Try it on," repeated Miss Blake, cordially.
Nan took the soft, warm thing by its rich brown ribbons and, setting it snugly on her head, tied the strings into a big broad bow beneath her chin.
"It's not so unbecoming!" commented the governess, observing Nan critically with her head on one side.
Nan looked in the mirror. What she saw there was the reflection of a flushed, excited face with keen, young eyes that were just now unusually large and bright. Sundry riotous tendrils of hair had escaped from their restraining combs and were flying loose at the temples, and, framing all, was a circle of dusky, flattering fur which lent a look of softness and roundness to the firm, square chin and rose above the brow in a quaint, coquettish peak which was vastly graceful and becoming.
"O Miss Blake!" cried Nan, her eyes flashing with pleasure, "isn't it the darlingest thing? And as warm as toast! I'll be ever and ever so careful of it. You're awfully good to lend it to me. But I really think I oughtn't to take it. Something might happen; it might get lost."
"Don't give it another thought," Miss Blake said, kindly. "Just wear it and keep warm and comfortable. You must take the gloves, too. They will keep your fingers cozy."
So Nan set out looking like a young Russian in her borrowed furs and feeling what satisfaction she might in the consciousness that she was appearing, if not behaving, at her best.
She found most of the party already assembled at Mrs. Cole's and as the door was opened to her, a loud chorus of shouting laughter met her ears and she was laid hold of by a dozen hands and dragged forward under the gaslight.
"Pooh!" shrieked the chorus again. "This one's easy enough! Nan Cutler! first guess," and she was released as hurriedly as she had been set upon, while the entire company fell upon a later comer and tried to discover the identity of the muffled, veiled individual before she had either spoken or recovered from the unexpected onslaught.
"Well, Nan," cried Harley Morris, jovially, "you're the only girl who isn't muffled out of all recognition. We've had a dandy time trying to identify some of them."
"I never saw you look so well," declared Louie Hawes, generously, with her eyes glued to the fascinating peak.
"Nor I," broke in Mary Brewster. "Really, I didn't know you at first. That hood is as disguising to you as our veils are to us."
Nan flushed, but made no response. Harley Morris gave a low whistle and strolled off to join John Gardiner, who was standing before the fire talking with grave-faced Mr. Cole, and as he went she heard him murmur under his breath:
"Sweet remark! Oh, these dear girl friends!"
It instantly changed her feeling from momentary resentment toward Mary to pity for her.
All at once Mrs. Cole's shrill treble was heard high above the hum and murmur of the other voices, crying:
"Now, girls and boys, time's almost up! It any of the party's missing, he or she will be left behind! Prompt's the word."
Then, stepping over to her husband, she tapped him lightly on the shoulder and said:
"There now, Tom, I'm glad we're going, for you're looking as solemn as an owl. Cheer up and have a lovely time with your book and that jolly fire, and don't forget to go to bed at nine o'clock like a good little boy."
Mary Brewster laughed, and most of the others joined in her merriment. But Mr. Cole looked so troubled and stern that Nan, who was gazing at him from the corners of her eyes, saw no reason to laugh at his wife's sally, but felt a much greater inclination to cry for pity of him and his anxious face.
Suddenly she was roused from her musing by John Gardiner's voice close at her ear.
"Nan!" he said.
"Oh, heyo, John!"
"I want to tell you something," he went on, nervously, in a hesitating whisper. "From the looks of her, Mrs. Cole means to carry things with a high hand to-night. Hope we won't come to grief. Sometimes the motto is 'everything goes,' and then it isn't so easy to hold back and stand for the things you ought to. I depend on you, Nan, to keep a level head, for some of us'll have to act as ballast or we'll all go under."
Nan's face glowed with gratification. "All right, John," she responded staunchly, and then, Mrs. Cole giving the signal, in an instant the roomful seemed to fling itself helter-skelter to the hall-door, fastening boas and mufflers as it went, all eager and breathless to be off. There was a deal of laughing and exclaiming, shrieking and protesting as the girls were bundled, one after another, into the sleigh.
"Is this you, Lu?"
"Yes. O dear! I have lost my veil. No, here it is, dragged under my chin."
"I thought I was to sit next to you, Nan!"
"Oh, that's all right, Mary's there, and it's too late to change now. No matter."
John Gardiner leaped up.
"I say there, Mike, hold your horses for a second. Would you mind moving down a place, Mary? Thanks! Mrs. Cole said I was to sit next to Nan, and as we are all under her orders to-night I'm bound to obey. There! this is what I call festive! 'A thorn between two roses,' eh?" and he settled himself comfortably between the two girls with a great, hearty laugh and a final "Ready!" at which word the horses started into a brisk trot. Their bells broke into a silver chime; the sleigh swept smoothly over the glaze of snow, and the evening's fun began.
Some one had brought a tin horn, and this was blown with such a vim that conversation was impossible. But remarks and retorts were shouted from one side to the other, and the tamest of them brought forth peals of laughter.
The heaven above them was densely black, and out of it flashed innumerable stars like sparks white-hot and quivering with inward fire. But the wind that swept across the sky was so cold that it made it seem to contract and retreat and leave the shivering world an inconceivable depth below.
Swathed and bundled as they were, the girls very soon began to feel the deadly chill in the icy air.
"Nan's shivering like an ash-pan!" John cried out suddenly. "Has anybody got an extra shawl or something they can lend her?"
"Hush!" returned the girl, trying to control her trembling, "it's nothing; I'm all right."
"Pity she can't keep warm with John Gardiner beside her!" Mrs. Cole suggested.
In the shadow Nan's teeth came together with a snap of disgust. She saw now what it was in Mrs. Cole that offended Miss Blake. She had never noticed it before, but it had been there, and she knew it. John made no retort, while the others laughed and applauded.
"Here, Nan!" spoke up some one at the other end of the sleigh, "here's a cigarette. Take it and warm yourself before its genial blaze," and it was passed along from hand to hand, its ruddy point glinting out in the shadow as it went along. When it came to Mary, instead of handing it on at once, she held it a moment, then suddenly raised it to her lips.
"Hey, there! Turn off the draught!" cried its owner merrily at sight of the newly-glowing tip.
"Shut down the damper!" shouted some one else.
"I dare you to smoke it!" laughed Mrs. Cole.
Mary deliberately took a long puff.
Nan leaned back behind John and laid her gloved hand impulsively on Mary's shoulder. "O Mary!" she protested in a whisper. "Don't. Please! It'll make you sick."
But the girl was not to be thwarted. She shook off Nan's hand impatiently.
"Mind your own business!" she replied, and took another puff.
On they swept through the icy air, across the snow-covered country, amid the white night. The horn blew; the voices sang and shouted, and finally the sleigh swung up before the hospitable road-house, where every window was alight and their steaming supper awaited them.
It was harder to get out of the sleigh than it had been to get in it, for joints that at first had been limber and strong were now stiff and cramped from cold and disuse, and the girls made a sorry show, limping and halting from the sleigh to the house. When Nan first gained the ground she could hardly stand, but a little vigorous exercise soon sent the blood tingling through her veins again and unknotted her muscles, and she was about to run gayly up the path when she felt a hand upon her shoulder, and looking round saw Mary Brewster beside her, her face ghastly and drawn in the pallid moonlight and her chin quivering weakly in a manner that Nan saw at once was not the effect of the cold.
"Lean on my shoulder and I'll get you up to the house in a jiff," she said, in a low whisper.
Mary clung to her, wavering and faint, without a word, and in the confusion no one noticed her plight. Nan had fairly to drag her up the steps, and then again up the staircase to the room the woman of the place had showed them when Nan had drawn her aside and told her of their dilemma.
"It's the cold!" gasped Mary, crying abjectly between her spasms of misery.
"No such thing!" returned Nan stoutly. "It's that villainous cigarette. But never mind now. There! Don't think of anything but getting better. I'll stroke your head for you. It must be aching terribly."
So she soothed and comforted the girl as best she could, and the kind mistress of the house came up every now and then with offers of help and reports of how the supper was progressing below, and after a while Mary grew quieter and could do something beside moan and cry and wring her hands over her own wretchedness.
"Nan," she whispered presently in a conscious-smitten voice, "I want you to leave me and go down stairs. You've given up the best part of the fun for me, but you shan't lose it all. Please go down!"
Nan shook her head. "No, you don't, ma'am!" she declared cheerfully, and Mary was too exhausted to argue the question. She felt deliciously drowsy and the freedom from pain made her tearfully happy. Vague, dreamy thoughts were wandering through her brain, and one of them was that Nan had been very kind to her. She had not deserved it. She had been mean to Nan. She admitted it. She ought to beg her forgiveness. It was so good to be out of pain that she was willing to do anything to prove her gratitude. She opened her eyes and saw Nan bending over her with a face full of sympathy. She put up her hands and drew the face down to hers, her lip trembling like a little child's.
"Kiss me, Nan!"
Nan kissed her.
"I want you to forgive me. I've been hateful to you and you've been generous and kind and—I love you for it. I'd like to be your friend—if you'd let me, after the way I've treated you."
Nan kissed her again. "Never mind that now. We'll begin all over, and I guess I can behave a little better myself. Now go to sleep and get a good nap before it's time to go home."
As soon as she saw that Mary had fallen soundly asleep Nan rose and slipped noiselessly down stairs. She had no trouble in finding the supper-room, for she had only to follow the echoing sounds to be led directly to the door. She stood a moment on the threshold before she laid her hand upon the knob. It seemed to her she had never heard such a hub-bub, but as she listened she seemed to hear, over and above it all, Miss Blake's soft voice saying quietly:
"If you and the other girls have no more careful a chaperone than Mrs. Cole, I am afraid your party will prove a rather uproarious one."
"Rather uproarious!" Nan smiled, as she repeated the words to herself. Then she turned the knob and pushed open the door.
The clamor surged louder than ever, and for a second seemed almost to stun her. Dishes were clattering, and every one seemed doing his or her best to add to the tumult and confusion. No one noticed Nan standing dumbly in the doorway, and it was only when some one's eye fell upon her as she took a step or two forward that there was a cry of "Hullo! Here's Nan!" and she was pulled to the table, forced into a chair, and plied with all sorts of dishes and questions, until she put her hands to her ears and begged for mercy.
"Here's some salad! Take this!"
"The jelly's most gone and what's left of it is melted. But you're welcome to it such as it is and what there is of it."
"Where have you been all this time?"
"We've been calling you every sort of a name for being so rude as to stay away from the supper."
"Oh, Nan had her good reason," shouted Mrs. Cole, pushing back her chair and springing to her feet.
"Come, girls and boys!" she cried shrilly, "it's getting late. If we want to dance we'd better be about it."
Of course that led to a general uprising, and in a moment the whole tableful was swarming toward the parlor.
"How do you like it, Nan?" asked John Gardiner, quizzically, coming and leaning toward her to whisper the question in her ear, as they stood at one side waiting for the music to begin.
"Like it!" repeated Nan, "I think Mrs. Cole's simply—well, I'm sorry she was ever asked to come. It would all have been so different if we had had Mrs. Andrews or Mrs. Hawes or—just imagine Miss Blake acting as she has to-night!"
"I can't imagine it!" returned John, emphatically, "and worse yet, Mike is in no condition to drive us home. He's been drinking. I went out to see if the horses were all right and being fed, you know, and there I heard about it. Mike simply mustn't drive."
Nan pressed her hands together and gave a stifled groan.
"That's what I wanted to tell you," continued John, hurriedly. "It isn't safe to let him try and I'm going to take his place myself. I don't know how long I can stand it, for it's colder than ever and I haven't any driving gloves, but I'll do the best I can and perhaps some of the other fellows will lend a hand."
Nan thought a minute. "I tell you what," she declared at last, "I'm going to do part of the driving myself. I'll sit up front and when you give out I'll lend a hand and we'll get through somehow. I've Miss Blake's gloves and they are as warm as toast."
The anxious look faded a little from John's face, and in spite of himself he showed he was relieved. "I may not have to give up at all," he said at length; "but if I do there's not a fellow in the whole lot I'd rather trust the reins to than you. Come! They're making a move. Get your things on as quick as you can and be where I can see you so we can take our places without making too much talk."
In a twinkling Nan had flown upstairs, roused Mary and helped her to get ready and was hooded and cloaked and standing in the hall-way. The others came up one by one and presently the big door was opened and they trooped through it out into the waiting sleigh. John gave Nan a hand and she sprang quickly to the place beside him on the driver's seat. They started.
It proved a very different matter sitting on that unsheltered box facing the wind to cuddling, as they had done before, among the warm straw with their faces shielded from the current by the high protecting sides of the sleigh, and after a very little while Nan had to set her teeth to keep from crying out for the pain in her stinging cheeks.
Back of them the rest of the party shouted and tootled and yodeled as cheerfully as ever. Every one wanted to know what had become of Mike, and as nobody could tell but John and Nan, and they wouldn't, the questions went unanswered, and by and by the subject was dropped and only occasional spiteful jokes made by Mrs. Cole at the expense of John's driving and Nan's sitting beside him while he did it.
Happily the horses knew the way home and were eager to get there, so they did not have to be urged or guided. But it was necessary to hold a tight rein, and John's hands soon began to feel tortured and twisted with the strain upon them biting through their numbness like screws of pain. He shook his head determinedly when Nan offered to relieve him, and at last she had to wrench the reins from him in order to take her share of duty and give him a chance to recover a little.
So, taking turns faithfully like good comrades, and exchanging never a word, they got the sleigh and its load safely into town at last, and not one of the gay, irresponsible party knew how difficult an achievement it had been.
Miss Blake herself opened the door to Nan and let her in. One glance at her, as she stood huddled and quivering with cold in the vestibule, was enough. Not a question was asked. She was led gently into the warm dining-room, her hood and cloak taken from her and her frozen hands briskly chafed, while on Miss Blake's tea-stand stood her little brass kettle, bubbling and purring merrily above its alcohol flame, and hinting broadly at soothing cups of something "grateful and comforting."
Nan let herself be waited upon in a sort of half dream. The agony in her hands had been so great that it had taken all her strength to bear it, and now it was going she felt weak and babyish.
"O dear!" she broke down at last, with a gulp of relief. "It's been an awful evening! Mrs. Cole was detestable. Do you know what she did?" and then came out the whole story pell-mell: all told in Nan's blunt, uncompromising way, and giving Miss Blake a better idea than anything else could have done of just how right she had been in opposing the girl's going under such chaperon age.
She was too wise to say "I told you so," and she was too sincere to try to gloss over the probable result of the episode. She looked grave and thoughtful when Nan had finished her account, and her voice was very serious as she said:
"What the consequences to the others may be I don't know; I dread to think. But I feel that at least you and John and Mary have seen things as they are, and will profit by your experience. You remember the talk we had at Mrs. Newton's before the holidays? She said 'Experience is an expensive school, and only fools can afford to go to it,' or something like that; you are no fool, Nan. I think you will see more and more plainly, as time goes on, that there are some things that we cannot afford to do. We cannot afford to buy a momentary pleasure at the price of a lifetime of regret, and we cannot afford to spend even one day of our life in unscrupulous company. It costs too much. We think we have a very keen business sense, we men and women, but we allow ourselves to be cheated every day we live in a way that would disgust us if we were dealing in dollars and cents. Self-respect is more valuable than momentary enjoyment, yet those boys and girls sold one for the other to-night.
"As for you, I think you made a good exchange, Nan, when you gave up your supper for Mary's sake. Love is a reliable bank, dear, and you can't make too many deposits in it. It always pays compound interest, and the best of it is, it never fails."
Nan's lips opened as if she were about to speak, but she closed them again, and sat looking into the fire very seriously and silently for some time. Then the lips parted again, and this time the words came, though even now with an effort:
"I guess you'll think it's no credit to me that I'm sorry I went. But I am sorry, and I would be if it had been the best time in the world. I didn't want to go, really, after you said you'd—rather I wouldn't. I didn't, honestly. It won't do either of us any good for me to say now that I wish I had done as you wanted me to. But I do wish it. I've hated myself all along for acting as I did. Now don't let's say anything more about it—but—but—I wanted you to know how I feel."
There was an ominous catch in her voice that warned Miss Blake not to pursue the subject. Nan could humble herself to apologize, but to follow the abasement up by shedding tears on it was too much for her dignity, and she fought against it stolidly.
But the governess knew her well enough by this time to feel assured that what she said was true, and she accepted the clumsy, halting "amende" as gratefully as if it had been the most graceful of acknowledgments.
"Dear me," she broke in, in quite a matter-of-fact way. "Do you know that the small hours are getting to be large hours, and we are sitting here as unconcernedly as if it were just after dinner. Come, let us both get upstairs and to bed as fast as our feet can carry us," and she promptly set the example by extinguishing the lamp and helping Nan to shoulder her armful of wraps.
"Oh, by the way," she said, as they readied the upper hall, and the girl was about to make return of the hood, "you may keep it if you will. Accept it and the gloves, with my love, as a sort of recompense for what other things you have missed this evening."
Nan was too overcome by the richness of the gift to make any response at all for a moment. Then she blurted out awkwardly, though in a very grateful voice:
"You're so good to me it makes me—ashamed. You're always giving me things. It isn't right. You give away everything you have."
Miss Blake lifted her chin and laughed gayly over the cleft in it.
"No, I don't," she returned, tip-toeing to drop the gloves, like a blessing, on the girl's head. "I have one or two things which I keep all for myself. But if I like to give presents, do you know what it's a sign of? It's a sign I'm poor. Poor people are always possessed by a passion for giving presents. It's true! I've always noticed it! Good-night!"
And that was the last Nan heard about the affair from Miss Blake. Unfortunately—or fortunately—it was not the last she heard of it from others, by any means. It was a long, long time before it was allowed to drop.
In the first place, Michael was discharged from the stables, and this led to a vast amount of discussion, for the poor fellow, who was temperate by nature, was thrown out of employment in midwinter, and his predicament seemed a pitiable one to those who really understood the facts in the case.
Miss Blake, when she heard of the affair, had bidden John Gardiner bring the man to her. She heard his story, and then sent him off with a few kindly, encouraging words, and the poor fellow felt comforted in spite of the facts that she had given him neither money nor any definite promise of help. When he had gone she sat for some time thinking busily, her chin in her palms and her elbows propped on the desk in front of her. She was still for so long that John and Nan stole off after a while and tried experiments with the kodak on some back-yard views, and when they came back to Miss Blake's room to ask her opinion on some point of focus they found the place deserted and the governess gone.
The next day Mike was discovered sitting smilingly enthroned in his accustomed place on the lofty box of the livery "broom-carriage," and he vouchsafed the information to congratulating friends that: "Ut's another chanct Oi hav, though how Oi come boy ut ye'll niver know anny moar than Oi do mesilf, for Misther Allen was that set agin me he wuddn't hear a wurrud Oi'd sa'. But Oi have another chanct and ut's mesilf 'll see till ut, ut lasts me me loife-toime."
"O dear!" complained Ruth to Nan, "I never want to hear the name of sleigh-ride again so long as I live. Everywhere I go, they say so significantly: 'We hear you had a very gay time the other night! Well, well! such things wouldn't have been tolerated when I was young!' and then they make some cutting remark about Mrs. Cole, and I'm afraid it's not going to be very pleasant for her after this, for none of our fathers and mothers want to have anything more to do with her. They say her example has been so bad. And one can't have a bit of fun nowadays, for we're all being kept on short rations to pay up for the other night."
But as the weeks passed the gossip died away and then every one breathed freer again.
Latterly Nan was filling her part of the household contract with considerably less ill-will than she had shown at the beginning, but even now there were occasional lamentations when the day was especially enticing, and her spirits rose and soared above the pettiness of bed-making and the degradation of dusting. It took her about twice as long to get through with her share of the work as it took Miss Blake, and she could never console herself with the thought that it was because the governess shirked. Occasionally she let her own tasks go "with a lick and a promise," as Delia described it, bat when she saw the thoroughness with which Miss Blake did even the least important thing she had the grace to be ashamed and to determine on a better course in the future. But before she really settled down to a stricter habit of conscientiousness something happened that gave her more of an impulse than a course of lectures would have done.
The winter had been a long and unusually severe one, but by March it seemed reasonable to suppose that its backbone was broken. Nan had preferred the care of the conservatory to the duller and less interesting work of dish-washing, and Miss Blake, in letting her take her choice, had only exacted the promise that her charge was not to be neglected. Nan had, as we know, given her hand upon it, and so the matter stood. The governess never "nagged" her about her duties; she took it for granted that the girl would honorably keep her word.
And indeed for some time she was tolerably thorough, watering the plants and loosening the soil about their roots; sponging the leaves of the rubber trees and palms and picking off all the shriveled leaves and faded petals from the flowering shrubs and keeping the temperature at as nearly the right degree as was possible with such varying weather and their simple device for heating the place.
But she found it was much more of a tax than she had first supposed. At the start plants had seemed so much more inviting than dishes that she had appropriated the care of them at once, and now that she discovered what her selection really involved she felt almost aggrieved, and was inclined to be cross when she saw Miss Blake's tasks finished for the day while her own was scarcely more than begun.
"Provoking things!" she would declare as she dashed a double spray of water on the rubber trees that did not need it, and gave but a mere sprinkle to the blossoming azalias that did: "if I'd known what a nuisance you were I can tell you I never would have taken you! Here! will you come off, or won't you?" and she would give some wilted blossom a vicious jerk that would set the entire plant shaking in its pot as though it were trembling with distress at the rough treatment it was receiving. If Miss Blake heard her she gave no sign. Sometimes when they passed a florist's window she would stop and look wistfully in at the bewildering display, and Nan would know that she was longing to go in and buy some especially fascinating orchid or unusually rare crysanthemum. But she would not yield to her impulse, for on one occasion the girl had said with a shrug of impatience:
"For goodness' sake don't get any more. It's all I can do to attend to the bothersome things now. I wish they were all in Hong Kong—every one of them."