Here Nan's head began to drop.  "That's what floors me," she responded
perplexedly.  "The rest is easy enough to settle; but how in the world
we are going to get people to work for us for nothing--"

"What are those things in your lap, Nan?" asked the governess suddenly
with a quick smile and an extra tap of the finger on the girl's palm.

"My hands, of course."

"Why shouldn't they be the pair we need?  I cordially offer the use of
mine."

"Oh!"

Nan's face was rather blank.  "I hate housework," she added, and her
mouth drew down at the corners in a pout of petulance.

"I doubt if any one really cares for it.  But it must be done, and in
this case you and I must consent to do it, at least in part.  Now that
you have looked the facts in the face, let us say no more about it,
after we have settled just what we prefer to do.  I have always taken
care of my own room.  Will you see to yours after this?"

"I s'pose so.

"Then there is the dusting and the plants."

"I'll take the plants," Nan hastened to declare.

"And the dishes on Mondays and Tuesdays?" continued Miss Blake.

There was a pause.

"If there's one thing I despise it's washing dishes," cried the girl,
her voice trembling with irritation.

The governess looked down at her own two delicate little hands and
seemed to be considering.  Then she raised her head quickly, and said,
without a shade of resentment in her voice:

"Very well then, dear, I'll take the dishes.  So here is the way it
stands: You care for the plants and your own room and I'll look after
my room and do the dusting and the dishes."

"You'll have more to do than I," hesitated Nan.

"No matter; if you do your share well, and don't neglect it, I am
willing to stand by my part.  Is it a bargain?"

Nan nodded grimly, and they shook hands upon it.

CHAPTER XV

A TUG OF WAR

"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.

CHAPTER XVI

THE SLEIGH-RIDE

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."

CHAPTER XVII

CONSEQUENCES

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."

[Illustration: "Provoking things!"]

So since then there had been no further additions to the conservatory,
and Miss Blake had to check her horticultural ardor or confine it to
her window-sill upstairs.

But the plants throve in spite of their ungracious nursing, and when
she was not irritated by them Nan was very proud of the fine showing
they made.

"I think that double, white azalia is one of most beautiful things I
ever saw: so pure and delicate!" said Mary Brewster to Miss Blake,
hanging over it in honest admiration one leaden-skied day when she come
to carry Nan off to her house to dinner and was waiting while the girl
went upstairs to get ready.

"Yes," replied the governess, "I love it!  But then, I love all the
dear things--even those poor woolly-leaved little primroses that have
almost less charm for me than any flowers I know.  I'm so glad they are
all doing so well.  I can't bear to bring a plant into the house and
then have it die.  It seems almost like murder.  But now I must run
away.  I have an appointment with my dentist at three.  It is very good
of you to ask Nan to dinner to-night, and I'm doubly glad it happens as
it does, for she would have to dine alone if she stayed at home, for I
have to go out of town on business and cannot get back tonight.  Delia
will call for Nan at nine o'clock.  Good-bye, and have a pleasant
evening!" and she caught up her satchel and was off in a twinkling.

But after she had let herself out of the front door she came back and
called Nan to the head of the stairs.

"It's bitterly cold," she said.  "I had no idea it was so severe!  Be
sure you wrap up warmly, Nan, and don't forget your gloves and leggings
when you come home.  Oh, and the plants!  You'll not fail to look after
them when you get in--the last thing before you go to bed?  I think it
will freeze to-night, and they will need extra heat.  Now, good-bye
again, and God bless you!"

Nan waved her a vigorous adieu with the towel she held in her hand, and
this time the governess was off in earnest.

The two girls followed her out not long after, and went laughing and
chatting down the street.

"I've asked Grace and Lu and Ruth to come in after dinner, and we're
going to have a candy-pull.  I didn't ask John, but I told him what was
up, and he said he and Harley and Everett had been wanting to call for
some time, and as I'd be sure to be in, he thought they might as well
do it to-night.  I told him he'd have to 'call' loud, for we'd be in
the kitchen, and probably wouldn't hear him, and he said he'd see to it
that we did; so I suppose we'll have them too."

Among them all it proved a gay evening, and seemed unusually so, for of
late jollifications had been rare.  As Ruth said, "they were all kept
on short rations to pay up for the other night."

It appeared to Nan when Delia arrived that she had made a mistake in
the hour, and had appeared at eight instead of nine; but as it happened
Delia purposely delayed in order that her girl might have an extra
sixty minutes, and when she pointed to the clock, whose short hand
pointed to ten, Nan could only shake her head, and say: "Well, I
suppose so--but it doesn't seem as if it could be."

It was so cold that Delia had brought an additional wrap for her, and
the girl was glad to avail herself of it when she felt the nip of the
freezing air.

"Why, it's much worse than it was this afternoon," she said.  "If this
is spring, I'd just as lief have winter.  I tell you what it is, Delia,
it won't take me long to tumble into bed.  I'm frozen stiff already.  I
hope you locked up before you came out, so all we'll have to do will be
to go upstairs.  I hate to putter about in the cold."

It seemed strange to go to bed without Miss Blake's cheery
"Good-night!" ringing in her ears.  It was the first time the governess
had spent a night away from home since she first came to the house,
almost six months ago, and Nan devoutly hoped there wouldn't be a
repetition of the performance in another half-year.  Her empty room
gave one "les homeseeks."

In order to forget it and to escape the cold, Nan cut short her
preparations for the night and got into bed with as little delay as
possible.  She cuddled comfortably between her smooth sheets and soft
blankets and in a moment was soundly asleep.

When she waked the next morning it was with a vague feeling of
responsibility, as though she had gone to sleep with a weight of some
calamity on her heart.  As she dressed she tried to recall it but there
was nothing in yesterday's experience to depress her and she ran down
to breakfast determined to shake off the haunting impression.  But all
through the meal it clung to her and she could not get rid of it.  To
be especially virtuous in Miss Blake's absence and show her that she
was "dependable," she took the dish-washing upon herself and got
through with it speedily.  Then up to her room to set that in order,
and then down to the conservatory to attend to the plants.

It was just as this juncture that Delia heard a wild cry of distress
ring through the house.  She ran upstairs in a fright and found Nan
standing at the threshold of the conservatory door gazing in and
wringing her hands.  The sight that met her eyes was a pitiful one.
There was not one plant among them all that had outlived the night.
The leaves of all were frozen black.

CHAPTER XVIII

"CHESTER NEWCOMB"

"Oh, do you think I could?" demanded Nan, eagerly.

Miss Blake considered a moment.  "I don't see any reason why it might
not be arranged."

"It's right by the sea and Ruth says they never fuss about clothes down
there.  Just anything will do."

The governess smiled.  "Nevertheless I think you will need a couple of
changes.  I have sometimes been asked to visit country houses where
'anything would do,' and I've generally found that it all depends on
what one understands by 'anything.'"

"I can wear a shirt-waist in the morning and in the afternoon I can
wear a--a--another one," announced Nan.

Miss Blake laughed.  "You poor child," she said, "I do believe you
haven't much beside for the summer."

"You see," broke in Nan, shamefacedly, "Delia didn't know anything
about styles and I didn't--care, and so we sort of let clothes go.  It
isn't because father wouldn't want me to have nice things."

Miss Blake took her up quickly.  "I know it is not.  And now we must
set to work at once to get you properly provided, for you are old
enough now to 'care,' not necessarily about styles, but certainly about
making a creditable appearance, and I want you to have a suitable
wardrobe so that you may always keep yourself tidy."

It seemed to Nan that the wardrobe Miss Blake proceeded to provide for
her was something more than merely "tidy."  The frocks were simple, it
is true, but very dainty and tasteful, and in her new interest in them
and the way they were made she quite forgot to complain at the extra
inch or two which the governess caused to be added to the length of the
skirts.

There had been some stormy scenes when the winter dresses were being
made, Nan insisting that she would not wear "such horrid dangling
things that were forever getting in her way."  She wanted her skirts
made short, and if she couldn't have her skirts made short, etc.

The skirts had not been made short, and these were even longer.  Clad
in them Nan looked very tall and womanly, and Delia realized for the
first time that her "baby" had ceased to be a little girl.

So at last the preparations were completed and the girl started off to
spend a fortnight with Ruth at the Andrews' beautiful summer home by
the sea.  Then came gay times.  Early morning dips in the surf;
clam-bakes on the beach; long, lazy hours spent on the veranda, when
the day was too warm for exercise, and when it was cooler, fine spins
along the hard, white sand, for miles beside the shimmering sea.

Nan grew as brown as an Indian, for she scorned shade-hats, and
oftenest had nothing on her head at all but her own thick thatch of
riotous brown hair.

Ruth's brother taught Nan to swim, and she entered into it with so much
zest that to his surprise he found his only difficulty lay in trying to
restrain her.  Nothing seemed to daunt her, and whatever any one else
did she immediately wanted to try.

"The fact of the matter is," young Mr. Andrews declared one day, "you
ought to have been a boy.  You'd make a capital fellow."

"I know it," admitted Nan, frankly.  "I love boys' sports and pranks,
and to think that all my life I've just got to 'sit on a cushion and
sew up a seam.'  It's perfectly awful."

"Fancy!" exclaimed Miss Webster, a fellow-guest, and a young lady whom,
by the way, Nan regarded with a good deal of disdain, because she
seemed what John Gardiner called "girly-girly," and was flirtatious.
"Fancy!  Why, I wouldn't be a man for anything in the world!  Just
think what hideous clothes they wear."

"Thank you, Miss Webster,"  retorted Mr. Andrews with mock solemnity.

"Oh, I didn't mean you," she returned with an emphasis and a soft
glance of the eyes.  "You really dress extremely well.  I adore your
neck-ties and your boots are dreams."

Helen Andrews tried to hide a scowl of irritation.  Alice Webster was
her friend, and she disliked having her display herself in her worst
light.  She knew her to be a warm-hearted, honorable girl whose gravest
fault, which, after all, might be only a foible, was her tendency to
turn coquettish when she was in the society of gentlemen.

Ruth rose and beckoned Nan to follow her.

"Isn't she a lunatic?" she demanded, as soon as they were out of
ear-shot.

"Perfect idiot!" responded Nan.  "I should think your brother would
just duck her in the water some fine day when she's making those
sheep's eyes at him.  I would if I were in his place."

"Oh, he doesn't care.  He thinks she's lots of fun.  Besides, he's
going away to-morrow, and won't see her again unless Helen makes her
stay longer."

"What'll she do for some one to make eyes at?"

"Don't know.  Helen generally has a lot of company, but just now there
seems to be a famine in the land!"

Suddenly Nan stood stock still.

"What's the matter?" demanded Ruth.

Nan waited a moment, and then bent over and whispered something in her
ear.

"Magnificent!  We'll do it!" cried Ruth, clapping her hands, and
breaking into a peal of laughter.

"Not to-night--while your brother is here!" protested Nan.

"Of course not.  To-morrow though, sure.  Carl will be gone and the
coast clear, and meanwhile we'll drill."

For the remainder of the day the girls were absorbed in something which
took them to their room and kept them there, and they only appeared
when dinner was announced, and the family already seated at the table.

"Well, Miss Nan," Carl Andrews exclaimed, "I wish you were a boy, and
I'd take you up into the mountains with me and teach you how to handle
a gun."

"What fun!" cried Nan.

"Yes, it would be great sport, and I warrant you'd like camp-life, too.
It's just the sort of thing that you'd enjoy.  Only I'm afraid it would
agree with you so well that you would grow an inch a week, and
considering you are a girl you'd better not get any taller."

"O dear!  Don't say that," groaned Nan, "for I probably shall grow lots
more as it is.  You see I'm not quite sixteen yet.  Do people ever get
their growth before they are sixteen, Mrs. Andrews?"

"Oh, sometimes," replied the lady kindly.  "I scarcely think you will
grow any more, my dear.  But I wouldn't worry about it in any case if I
were you."

"But I don't want to tower over everybody," wailed the girl.  "Just
think, I'm head and shoulders above Miss Blake now!"

"But Miss Blake is a 'pocket Venus!'  Just as high as one's heart,"
said Carl Andrews.  "I took her home the other night and she barely
reached to my shoulder."

"Then you and Nan must be about the same height!" said Helen.

Nan made a grimace.

"Good rye grows high!" quoted Miss Webster, good-naturedly.  And then
the elder Mr. Andrews, who was a little deaf, began to talk about the
crops, probably thinking they had been discussing grain, since he heard
the word "rye."

Early the next morning Carl Andrews started off, and the family waved
him a vigorous good-bye from the veranda steps, and after he had gone
the different members of the household went about their own particular
business, and did not meet again until luncheon-time.

It proved an unusually warm day, and when evening came the young people
were glad to sit quietly on the veranda in the dark and enjoy the
heartening breeze that swept up from the sea.  Mr. and Mrs. Andrews had
gone, as was their custom, out driving immediately after dinner, and so
the four girls were left to themselves.  They were just laughing over
Ruth's description of one of Nan's exploits when the maid appeared
bearing a letter on a salver.

"For Miss Cutler," she said, and handed it to Nan.

The girl excused herself and hastened indoors to read it.  A moment
later she called to Ruth.

"It may be news from home," surmised Helen.  "I hope it's nothing
serious.  Her father is away; has been for two years or more.  I
believe they expect him home this fall," and then she and Alice fell to
talking of other things and Helen was just wishing Carl could see her
friend in this mood, and know how womanly and sensible she could be
when suddenly they both stopped talking at the sight of a man's figure
coming up the long pathway from the outer road.

"Who can it be?" whispered Helen.

"A tramp?" suggested Miss Webster.

"No.  A tramp wouldn't come straight up to the house.  It must be a
caller; possibly a friend of Carl's," murmured Helen.

The stranger came directly toward the veranda, but at the steps he
paused a moment as though embarrassed at sight of the two girls
unexpectedly rising to meet him from out of the shadow.

"Is Mr. Andrews in?" he asked, in a low, shy voice, and Helen said she
was sorry, but neither her father nor brother were at home.  To which
did he refer?

"To Mr. Carl Andrews," and then it was explained that he and Mr. Carl
Andrews were great chums.  They--

"Won't you take a seat," asked Helen, hospitably, and he accepted at
once while she introduced Miss Webster and herself and he gave his name
as Chester Newcomb.

"Oh, yes; I've often heard Carl speak of you," declared Helen, and then
she had to excuse herself to answer Ruth who was calling to her
vociferously from upstairs.

"I'm afraid Nan has had bad news," she said, anxiously.  "Excuse me,
please.  I'll go and see what she wants and be back directly."

Mr. Newcomb and Miss Webster fell at once into an easy chat.  That is,
Miss Webster did.  She rattled on in her least attractive manner, and
became so absorbed that she only noticed how long Helen had been absent
when Mr. Newcomb rose to go and she had not yet returned.

"Pray don't call her," he entreated.  "She probably is very much
engaged.  I--I am spending a couple of weeks here and shall be charmed
to come again if I may."

Miss Webster could only in turn assure him that she--that Helen and she
would also be charmed, and then he bowed himself off, striding down the
path with a free, somewhat boyish swing, and disappearing at length in
the shadow of the shrubbery.

He came frequently after that and the girls began to chaff Miss Webster
about her "conquest" for he never seemed to care to come when the rest
were about, but chose such times for his calls when he and Alice could
stroll in the garden after dusk or sit and watch the sea and the stars
from the shadow of the broad veranda.

It was very romantic and Miss Webster wore a dreamy, rapt expression
nowadays that sent Nan and Ruth off into fits of laughter when they
were out of the range of her eyes and ears.

"What a pity it is he can't be here to see?" gasped Ruth.

"Oh, he sees enough, never you fear," Nan assured her.  "When one casts
sheep's eyes like that they hit even in the dark!  Poor thing!  She is
such a goose.  Last night when he told her he was going to-morrow she
grew quite tragic and--"

"O Nan!  How could you listen?" cried Ruth in a shocked voice but
immediately after going into another spasm of laughter.

"She quotes Shakespeare at him," gasped Nan, convulsed with mirth, and
not a bit abashed.  "You ought to hear.  It's rich!"

"Well, we must see that the coast is clear to-night for I s'pose she
will be particularly touching, and Helen is getting awfully hard to
manage.  It wouldn't do to interrupt them at the last minute just when
he was getting pathetic maybe.  I wonder what he'll do?"

"He'll be real dignified," declared Nan, solemnly.  "You wait.  He'll
be eloquent even if he is 'only a boy' as she says."

So the two girls disappeared utterly after dinner, and when Mr. Newcomb
arrived he found Miss Webster quite alone, for Helen also was nowhere
to be seen.

"She hasn't been very well lately," Miss Webster explained.  "She looks
terribly pale and anxious and I'm afraid she has something on her mind.
Her headaches worry me!" and then she fell back into her poor, little
artificial manner again and sighed and looked sentimental and was
altogether "idiotic" as Nan would have said, and their two low-pitched
voices could be heard murmuring away in the stillness until poor Helen,
who was really half sick with a nervous headache upstairs, could have
cried with irritation and pain.

She sat up on the bed when Ruth came into the room, and attacked her at
once.

"I can't stand it another minute.  It's driving me wild!"

"Hush!  It's only to-night.  This is the last time.  Don't make a
scene!" pleaded Ruth.

"I'll never get over it," wailed Helen.  "It simply is the most
detestable thing I ever knew.  In our own house too!  If this weren't
the last time I--"

What she would do was never discovered for just at that moment a shrill
scream ran through the night, followed by the exclamation in a familiar
voice:

"Great Scott!  My wig!"

And Ruth and Helen rushed below to find Miss Webster in a state of
collapse on one of the veranda settees and Nan standing over her, clad
in complete male attire, and fanning her frantically with a curly,
blonde wig which she wrenched by force from the trellis where it had
inadvertently caught.

"I was just leaning back and being beautiful, and it got hooked on a
wire or something, and when I went to get up it stayed there and gave
me away!" she promptly explained.

Then there was a scene.

Miss Webster wept!  Nan lamented!  Ruth laughed, and Helen scolded, and
no one heard a word any one else was saying.

But after a time every one grew calmer.

"O Helen!  I've made such a fool of myself," cried Alice abjectly.
"How can you ever respect me again?"

"Respect you?  Think of me!" sobbed Helen.  "Can you ever forgive me
for knowing it all this time and letting it go on?  Nan, you wretched
girl, come here this minute and beg Miss Webster's pardon.  Ruth
Andrews, this is your work, Miss!  See what you have done, and in your
own house, too!"

But at this time Alice surprised them all.  She put a gentle hand on
Helen's arm and said quite simply, and with a touching dignity:

"Please don't ask anybody to beg my pardon.  I deserved the lesson!
The girls needn't say a word.  I--I--I am a goose, but I'll really try
to be better, and the kindest thing they can do is never to refer to it
again."

The rare tears sprang to Nan's eyes, and she grasped Miss Webster's
hand in a grip that hurt.

"You're downright fine!" she said, "and I'll never forget you as long
as I live."

And then she had to beat a hasty retreat to escape Mr. Andrews and his
wife, who were just driving up to the door.

But the secret leaked out, and she and Ruth were reprimanded sharply by
Mrs. Andrews who, for once in her life, turned severe and called them
sternly to account, and it was Alice Webster herself who interceded for
them, and begged that everything be forgiven and forgotten.

They were her devoted slaves after that, and Nan, whose fortnight had
been extended, at the Andrews' request, to a month, took especial
delight in fetching and carrying for her to the close of her stay, and
in every possible manner making her feel how sincerely she regarded and
respected her.

As for Miss Webster, she seemed like another girl.  In fact, Carl
Andrews declared that he had never known what a "good sort" she was and
said he was mighty glad they had prevailed upon her to stay.

He never knew why the mere mention of his friend, Chester Newcomb's
name should cause such a convulsion in the household, and when that
gentleman finally arrived, and the family met him for the first time,
it certainly seemed strange that they should all redden and stammer as
if they had been "awkward nursery children appearing at dinner."

Nan especially could not be induced to have anything to say when he was
near, and when Carl discovered this he took a mischievous delight in
forcing her into his company and watching her try to "squirm" out of it
again.  Miss Webster took pity on her and in the simplest, most natural
way came to her rescue whenever she was being victimized, and by and by
it became apparent even to Carl himself that "Ches and Miss Webster hit
it off first-rate."

But at last Nan's visit really drew to a close, and, in spite of her
reluctance at leaving these good friends, she felt satisfied to go
home--she did not stop to ask herself why.

Town seemed very stuffy and tame after the freedom of the country and
the sea, but when Miss Blake asked her if she would like to go away
again she replied: "Not alone," and then blushed shamefacedly and tried
to change the subject.

While she was gone the governess had committed an extravagance.  She
had bought a new bicycle.

"What under the sun did you do that for?" demanded Nan.  "Your other
was a beauty and as good as new."

"But it wasn't new," suggested Miss Blake, lamely.

"Pooh!" sniffed Nan.

"I wanted this year's model."

"Oh, very well!  If you can be as particular as all that!  How much did
they allow you on the other machine?  I hope you made a good bargain,"
said Nan.

"I didn't let them have the other machine," hesitated Miss Blake.  "It
didn't seem worth while.  Besides I may want to use it myself
sometimes.  Won't you come down and see the new one?"

Of course Nan did not delay, and she went into raptures over the
beautiful wheel, praising it generously as she examined every point
with the eye of a connoisseur.

"But it seems to me a pretty high frame!" she speculated, standing off
and taking it in from a distance.

"I wanted a high frame," responded Miss Blake.

"Seems to me pretty well up in the air for you, even with the saddle
down," insisted Nan, doubtfully.

"You try it," suggested the governess.  "If it suits you it will
certainly be too high for me."

"It does suit me," announced Nan, balancing herself by a hand against
the wall.  "You'd better send it back and get a lower frame."

But Miss Blake shook her head.

"No, I like this and I'm going to keep it.  But of course if it is too
high I can't use it, and so--so--I'm afraid you'll have to, Nan.  You
won't mind, will you?  I mean getting your birthday present this way
ahead of time?  I thought if we waited you'd lose the whole summer."

Nan flung herself from the wheel in a rapture of surprise.  It seemed
too good to be true.  She could not believe it.  Miss Blake had her
thanks more in the girl's radiant delight than in the mere words she
spoke, though these were genuine enough and full enough of gratitude.

All through the long season after that, whenever the heat was not too
intense, Nan and her wheel could have been seen flashing through the
Park or taking a well-earned rest in the cool shadow of the Dairy
porch, where a sip of water seemed sweeter than ambrosia and a fugitive
breeze more aromatic than any zephyr from Araby the blest.

Sometimes she and Miss Blake took longer trips into the country, and
then the governess had to be constant in her warnings to her against
her reckless fashion of riding.  Again and again she spoke, and Nan
always meant to take heed and then always forgot, and fell back into
her old way once more.

"I can't resist such a coast as that was," she would plead.  "And if I
got off for every old man who thinks he has the right to the road I'd
be dismounting all the while."

"I beg you not to take such risks," Miss Blake would rejoin.  "It
simply spoils my ride for me, Nan, to see you so reckless.  Such
head-long wheeling has nothing to recommend it.  It is neither expert
nor admirable.  When you fling along so blindly you are merely doing a
foolish, heedless thing and running serious risks.  I am sure you will
come to grief some day."

"Don't you worry!  I am as much at home in my saddle as I would be in a
rocking-chair.  See me ride without touching the handle-bars!"

And presently she would lose all recollection of her good resolve, and
go hurling on at a break-neck speed in the van of some skittish horse,
or slowly zig-zag ahead in the path of some stolid coachman, causing
him to anathematize all wheelmen in general and this especially
provoking specimen in particular, while her watching companion held her
breath in trembling alarm.

At last Miss Blake told Nan decidedly that unless she were willing to
ride properly she must give it up altogether.

"I cannot stand this strain any longer," she said, in real distress.

She and Mrs. Newton and the girl herself were taking their first ride
in company since the early summer.  Now it was autumn, and the leaves
were turning.  Mrs. Newton had just come back from the country, and Nan
was eager to display her skill, which she felt had improved not a
little since their neighbor's departure.

The fresh wind, keen and bracing as it came from the sea, filled her
with a sense of new strength and energy, and she felt the effect of the
invigorating atmosphere in her blood.  A scent of burning leaves was in
the air, and the indescribable suggestion of coming winter gayety.
To-day the road was crowded with carriages.  They thronged the
fashionable drive, and lent it a peculiarly animated aspect.
Equestrians and wheelmen were also out in full force, and the presence
of so many people set Nan's blood tingling with excitement.  She tossed
her head back, as the governess uttered her decision, with the
impatience of a mettlesome horse.

"Now remember!" warned Miss Blake.

Perhaps it was just this extra little warning that proved too much for
Nan's overcharged, headstrong spirit--or perhaps she did not hear in
the midst of the noise of hoofs and wheels about them.

They were spinning noiselessly along the outer edge of the driveway
leading from the Park entrance to the cycle path, when suddenly Nan
gave a quick run forward and then made a swift dart for the other side,
weaving perilously in and out among the horses and moving vehicles,
dexterously dodging, veering, and turning until Miss Blake's heart
throbbed thickly from dread and her pulses beat heavily in her temples.

"I must overtake her," she cried to her companion.  "She will be
killed!  I must save her!"

Even as she spoke her breath caught in a short gasp, and she turned
suddenly rigid and ashen white.

Coming up the road at full speed was a horse, whose driver, sitting
close over its haunches in his narrow sulky, was racing his animal
against one similarly driven and urging it on to its utmost pace for
winning honor.

At his approach a clear path was made for him by the turning right and
left of the throng--by all save Nan.

She heard a man's voice shout hoarsely to her.  The oncoming horse had
the speed of a racer.

A spirit of mad defiance possessed her.  She steered straight as an
arrow before her.  Then, like a flash, she veered, dodging from under
the horse's very nose.  She had accomplished her feat very cleverly.

But alas, for Nan!

Even as she sped on, full of the exquisite thrill of exultation in her
own prowess she heard behind her the sound of a dull, fear-thickened
cry.  Then a sudden confusion of voices and the cessation of rolling
wheels.  She stopped and turned.

The onward sweep of the mass of vehicles had been instantaneously
checked.  The road was clear for some rods before her and in the centre
of this open space lay--a broken bicycle.

A little group of men crowded close about some central object on the
ground.  Women were wringing their hands and weeping hysterically, and
one woman--it was Mrs. Newton--was crying wildly,

"Let me go to her!  Let me go!"

The circle of men upon the ground made way, and then Nan saw what it
was around which they knelt.

She gave a quick, fierce cry of pain.  The little governess lay quite
still and motionless.  Her eyes were closed; her face was white as
marble.  All her bright hair was lying loose about her temples--and it
was streaked with blood.

CHAPTER XIX

IN MISS BLAKE'S ROOM

Nan never forgot that scene.  It seemed to her afterward, that even in
the midst of the horror that almost stupefied her and made her blind,
it had been indelibly photographed upon her brain to the merest detail
with torturing distinctness.

She could see Mrs. Newton's drawn, livid face, and the stern, set
expression of the men who gathered about in knots here and there
discussing the accident in whispers, or arranging the best means of
getting back to town.  A doctor, who happened to be near at hand, had
sprung forward at the first moment of alarm, and he and a strange,
kind-faced woman were together bending over the prostrate form between
them, while over all arched the high dome of the blue October sky,
beyond them stretched the level road, narrowing in the distance to a
point that seemed to pierce the sea, and on either side spread the
branches of bordering maple trees, each shining brilliant and gorgeous
In the autumn sunlight.

Presently, in response to a demand from the doctor, a low-hung carriage
drew out from the ranks of waiting vehicles, and into it was lifted,
oh, so carefully! the inert form of the governess, and her head laid
upon Mrs. Newton's lap.

Nan pressed close to the wheels.

"Can't I go with her?" she whispered.

Her companion gazed at her blankly for a moment.  Then she seemed to
realize the question, and answered it.

"No," she replied.  "Get my machine, and--and hers, and see that some
one carries them back for us--some man will do it."

Then without another word she turned her head away, and slowly, slowly
the carriage moved and began its snail's-pace journey townward.

Nan looked helplessly about her.

"Won't some one take the bicycles home?" she pleaded.

She never knew who performed the office.  She never cared.  She gave
some stranger her address without the slightest interest as to whether
he was trustworthy or no, and then, mounting her own machine, she sped
home as fast as the wheels would turn.

Thus it was that when the dreary little cavalcade reached home at last
everything was in readiness for its reception.

There was no difficulty nor delay in getting upstairs, and in an
incredibly short time the place had assumed the air of hushed solemnity
that always seems to overhang the spot where illness is.

Nan crouched outside the threshold of the sick-room and listened to the
low sounds within with a feeling of overwhelming guilt at her heart.
She dared not go in.

At last the door was opened, and the physician stepped forward.  He saw
Nan cowering in the gloom.

"What is this?" he asked kindly.

Nan dragged herself up painfully, as though her limbs had been made of
lead.

"Have I--have I--killed her?" she managed to gasp.

The doctor bent on her a pitying look.

"Killed her?" he repeated.  "I do not know what you mean.  Do you mean
will she die?  No, my child, not if we can help it--and God grant we
may.  But it may be long, very long, before she is well.  She has been
badly hurt, poor little soul!"

Then followed a term of harrowing suspense.  Nights when Nan thought
the sun had forgotten how to rise--so long they seemed and never ending.

The fever that followed the first season of lethargy raged fierce and
hot for many a day, and the delirium that accompanied it was difficult
to quell.  It seemed at times as though it must burn the patient's very
life away.  It was during these days that Nan learned how much she had
caused her friend to suffer.  What, in her moments of consciousness,
she had never permitted to pass her lips, now in these hours of
delirium she dwelt on and repeated over and over.  It was of Nan,
always of Nan that she spoke.

Nan must have this; Nan must not do that.  It was her duty to protect
Nan and guard her.  She followed the girl in perilous journeys; she
tried to guide her from dangerous courses.  She betrayed her anxious
care for her in every word she uttered.  And then sometimes she would
say something that Nan could not comprehend.

"Florence's child!" she would murmur.  "Florence's child!" and then she
would catch herself back with a sudden look of fear as though she had
betrayed a secret.

"My mother's name was Florence," Nan would say brokenly.  "But I don't
know what she means.  She never knew my mother."

At last came a change, and then Nan was excluded from the room.

"You might excite her, and she must be carefully guarded against any
chance of that," the doctor said in explanation.

But Nan was almost too happy to care.  The first sound of the low,
sweet voice speaking intelligently sent a thrill of passionate
gratitude to her heart.

How she and Delia plotted and planned for the invalid.  How Nan made
the room to fairly blossom with the flowers that daily came pouring in
from all manner of strange and unexpected sources.

"I never knew she had such lots of friends," the girl said one day to
Delia.

The woman looked down at her with a flash of superior understanding in
her eyes.

"She's a wise one," she said.  "She goes her own way, and it's little
she asks of any one and it's less she says.  But what she does ain't
little, I can tell you, Nan.  I know of many a thing she's done for
those who, if they haven't got money, have the grateful hearts in them
to remember kindness and to love the one that shows it to them.  Some
day you'll know her for what she is, and then you'll never strive
against her any more and you'll love her as many another has done
before you."

The girl gazed straight into the woman's eyes.  "I love her now,
Delia," she said.  "I've loved her from the first minute--only I didn't
know it some of the time and the rest I was a horrid--little--beast, so
there!"

Oh, the happy days that Nan spent in that quiet room above stairs.  How
she grew to love it!  The sunshine coming through the curtains and
making great patches of mellow light upon the floor seemed more bright
here than anywhere else.  If it rained, this place was less dreary than
any other, and in sun or storm it was the only spot that Nan felt had
the power to quell her wayward mood when it rose against her will and
urged her back to her hoydenish exploits once more.

Miss Blake, lying back against her snowy pillows, had a look of such
inexpressible sweetness to Nan that often and often the girl would
fling herself beside the bed with her arms about the fragile figure,
crying:

"Oh, you dear, you dear! how I love you!" and then the other, with a
very happy smile would invariably answer, "And I you, Nan."

It was all understood between them now.  Pardon had been humbly asked
and freely granted, and there was now only the remaining regret of
impending separation; the dread of the parting that was to come.

At one time they had thought that it would occur within a few weeks'
time, and the joy that Nan felt in her father's return was overshadowed
by the grief she experienced in the coming loss of her friend.

But now the date of Mr. Cutler's home-coming had been postponed.  He
would leave Bombay as he had at first intended, but business would
detain him in London, and he could not expect to reach home until that
was completed--so Mr. Turner said.

Thus Nan had to reconcile herself to her disappointment and the
indefiniteness of her father's return, in the thought that if her
meeting with him was deferred, why, so was her parting from Miss Blake.

The weeks that passed before the governess was fairly convalescent had
brought them well into November.  They had been busy, helpful weeks for
Nan.  In her thought for her friend's comfort she had unconsciously
learned a lesson in gentleness and patience that nothing else could
have taught her.  Her voice grew lower, her step lighter, and the touch
of her fingers more delicate.  All this could never have been
accomplished in such a short space by ordinary means, but Love is a
magical teacher and he instructed her in his art.

As the dear invalid grew stronger Nan tried to beguile the long hours
by reading aloud to her from her favorite authors, sage philosophers,
wise poets, and tender tale-tellers.  Sometimes she did not at all
comprehend the meaning of the pages she read, but Miss Blake was always
ready to give her "a lift" over the hardest places, and to her surprise
she grew really to love these serious books, and to get an insight into
the beauty of their character.

Once in awhile she would take up the daily paper to give her friend an
idea of "what was going on in the world," seriously reading discussions
about this "bill" or that "question" with absolutely no conception of
what the whole thing was about.

One day, it was during the last of November, she sat before the fire in
the governess' room feeling especially contented and placidly happy.
Miss Blake, safely ensconced among her cushions, was cozily sipping a
cup of bouillon.

The room was very still.

Suddenly Nan jumped to her feet, and, clasping her hands high over her
head, said, with a luxurious sort of yawn:

"Oh--my!  How I'm liking it nowadays.  Things are so sort of sweet and
cozy.  Do you s'pose it's too good to last?  Do you s'pose it has
anything to do with my trying to be good and not letting my 'angry
passions rise'?"

The governess nodded her head, but made no other reply and after an
instant Nan slipped to the floor again, and, sitting Turk-fashion
beside her companion's knee, considered how possible it would have been
for Miss Blake to have taken that occasion to lecture her on the past
error of her ways.  But she had learned that it was not the governess'
way to preach.  That nod was as eloquent as a sermon to Nan, and she
understood it perfectly.

"Shall I read you something from 'The Tribune'?" she asked, after a
moment's musing.  And she took up the paper and began searching for the
editorial page.  When she had found it she set about reading the first
leader that came to hand, quite regardless of whether it would prove
interesting to her auditor or not.  The fact that it was unintelligible
to her seemed a sort of guarantee, in her mind, that it would be
interesting to Miss Blake.  She read on and on until both her breath
and the column itself came to a stop.

"You poor child," said the governess affectionately.  "Don't read
another word of that.  How stupid it must be for you.  Here, take this
book of dear Mary Wilkins.  We can both of us understand her, and she
will do us both good.  You need not victimize yourself a moment longer,
dear Nannie."

But Nan, radiant with good humor, felt a sort of glory in just such
self-victimizing.  She searched through the page for further
unintelligible text.

All at once she paused and read a few lines to herself.  Then she burst
into a laugh.

"Here's something about a man who has such a funny name.  It's James
Murty, alias Dan Divver, alias Shaughnessy.  What a last
name--Shaughnessy!  And why was he called alias twice over, Miss Blake?
I didn't know one could have the same name more than once.  It seems
awfully expensive--I mean extravagant." Miss Blake laughed.

"You are thinking of Elias, Nan.  This man's name is not Elias.  Alias
is pronounced differently, and is not a name at all, but a word
signifying otherwise, or otherwise called.  It means that the man has
gone under those different titles.  And I don't think I care to hear
what it has to say about the gentleman, dear.  He probably isn't just
the sort of person whose exploits would make fair reading."

"Is he bad?" asked Nan.

"I should gather, from his names, that his existence had been somewhat
checkered," replied the governess with a twinkle in her eye.

"Is it wicked to go under other names than your own?"

Miss Blake flushed as she bent forward to place her empty cup upon the
table by her side.  She was far from strong yet; the slightest exertion
brought the blood to her cheeks.

"Not necessarily," she said.  "But as a general rule people whose lives
have been simple and upright do not need to live under an assumed name.
Of course there might be exceptional cases--and there is a difference
between an alias and an incognito."

"What's an incognito?" questioned Nan.

"Why, if a person of rank or importance travels through a country and
wishes to escape publicity, he often does so incognito--that is,
unknown.  He will drop his official title and take his family name or
part of his family name with a simple prefix.  For instance, a king
might care to be known as the Duke of So-and-so; a Duke as Mr. ----,
whatever his surname chanced to be.  That would not be wicked and it
would not be an alias.  And sometimes people who are not nobles find it
desirable to remain unrecognized for a time.  Take it for granted that
I was not, in reality, a governess at all; I mean that I was not forced
by circumstances to take such a position, but that I for some reason
chose to assume it.  That I cared to come here and be with you because
I had known and loved your parents long ago and wished to do my best
for their child.  Then suppose I did not care to disclose my identity
to--to--people because of--well, no matter--I simply came here giving
you but part of my name--not the whole, why it might not be a wise
course, but it certainly could not be called a wicked."

"Oh, how I wish you had," cried Nan.  "It would be splendid fun.  Just
like a princess in disguise and things.  Say you aren't a governess and
that your name isn't Blake.  Oh, please do.  It'll be just like
fairy-stories if you will."

"How can I, dear, when I am and it is?" replied the governess, slowly.
"I am no princess in disguise, I assure you.  I am simply a very
prosaic little woman and your devoted friend.  I don't think I could
possibly discover anything at all resembling a fairy-tale in my life.
But some time, perhaps, when you are older, and when--I mean, if we
meet again, I will tell you all there is to tell about myself--that is,
if you care to listen.  It will not be exciting--but you might care to
know it."

"Oh, I would, I would!" the girl exclaimed heartily.  "But I hate to
have you talk of 'if we meet again.'  Why, we must, Miss Blake.  Don't
you know I couldn't live and know I wasn't to see you any more?  It's
like the most awful thing that could happen to have you go way at all,
and the only way I can bear it is thinking of how we'll see each other
often and often.  Why, my father will be so thankful to you for taking
such care of me!  I guess he won't know what to do.  And when you see
him and find how good he is, you won't be afraid a bit.  You'll just as
lief stay here as not.  He's the best, the dearest--oh, you couldn't
help but like my father."

A soft hand patted her head in loving appreciation, but not one word
said the governess, and the two sat together in silence for some time
thinking rather sober thoughts, until the sound of the door-bell broke
in upon the stillness and brought Nan to her feet and sent her flying
to the balusters to peep over and discover who the late caller might be.

"It's Mr. Turner, and he asked for you," she said, coming back into the
room and bending to gather up the scattered news sheets that strewed
the floor.  "He looked as solemn as an owl, and he asked for you in a
voice that made me feel ever so queer--it was so trembly."

"He may be cold," suggested Miss Blake.

She rose and settled the pillows upon the divan.  She would have to
receive her guest up here.  She was not yet permitted to venture below.
She and Nan stood ready to receive him as he entered the room, and
after the first greetings the girl was about to sit down beside her
friend when the lawyer said abruptly:

"My dear, I must ask you to permit me to talk to Miss Blake alone
to-day.  I have some private business to transact with her.  You will
pardon me for asking you to leave us."

Nan rose immediately with a smile of good-natured understanding, but as
she turned to leave the room she saw that the face of the governess was
deathly white, and she ran back to her, crying:

"What is it; oh, what is it?  Are you faint?  Let me get you something."

She was in a sudden bewilderment of alarm.  Miss Blake gently put her
aside, saying calmly,

"Why, nothing is the matter, Nan.  Nothing at all, my dear.  I am
strong and well now, you know.  Quite strong and well.  You must not
make Mr. Turner think I am ill, else he will go away again, and I shall
not know what he has to say to me.  I am quite able to hear--whatever
it is.  So go away, dear."

The girl obeyed, and the next moment the door had closed behind her,
and only the sound of her voice from without, singing in happy
reassurance, broke the stillness of the room where the lawyer and the
governess stood facing each other silently.

CHAPTER XX

THROUGH DEEP WATERS

Mr. Turner was the first to speak.  "Sit down," he said kindly.  "You
must not stand."

Miss Blake sank into her place upon the divan, but she did not lean
back.  She sat stiffly upright, nervously locking and unlocking her
fingers in her lap and compressing her lips tightly, but asking no
questions--saying no word.

The lawyer drew a chair beside her and slowly, deliberately seated
himself in it.

"You remember," he began at length, in a hesitating sort of way, "that
I told you some time ago that I had some reason to fear that affairs
were not prospering at Bombay.  I wish to come to the point at once; to
spare you all suspense.  I am afraid Mr. Cutler is in some serious
difficulty, and--"

He paused.  The governess leaned forward, and her breath came quickly.

"Go on," she whispered.

"For some time past his letters have been most unsatisfactory.  He has
seemed depressed and discouraged.  What word I have received from him
during the past few months has been of such a character as to lead one
to form the gravest suspicions.  His letters have been short and
hurried--written, evidently, under great mental strain.  And latterly
they have ceased altogether.  For the last two months, ever since you
have been ill, I have heard literally nothing from him.  His plan was
to leave Bombay in September.  That he kept to his original purpose I
have no reason to doubt.  He was on the steamer, or, at least, his name
was on its passenger list.  Of course while you were so ill I could say
nothing to you of this--besides I had only my suspicions then.  But as
time passed, and no communication from him reached me I grew
apprehensive.  Within the last two weeks I have sent numberless
dispatches to him to his London address, but not one of them has
received a reply--in fact, no one of them has been delivered to him.
The people there do not know where he is.  I have cabled to Bombay,
thinking he might have been detained there unexpectedly, but that, too,
has proved of no avail.  The Bombay house know nothing of his
whereabouts.  He left them as he intended to do in September, and since
then they have heard from him as little as I."

Miss Blake's eager eyes seemed to search the lawyer through and
through.  He shifted uneasily in his place.

"It is very difficult to go on," he said, with a nervous, constrained
cough.

"Quick!  Quick!" whispered the governess.  "Tell me everything
now--this minute.  Tell me!  Tell me!"

"There is little more to tell," said Mr. Turner sadly.  "This afternoon
I received a wire from his London banker, and it seems--that--he,
William Cutler, is--is--dead."

There was a low cry.  Miss Blake had leaped to her feet at his words,
and now she was swaying forward as though too faint to stand.  The
lawyer sprang forward to save her from falling, but she pushed him away
with both hands almost savagely.

"No, no!" she gasped.  "I am strong.  I am strong.  But--God pity us!
My poor little Nan--and--oh, my poor little Nan!"

She sank back upon the divan and buried her face in her outstretched
arms.

The lawyer rose and went to the window.

Outside the wind blew drearily.  The bare trees showed but dimly
through the gathering dusk.  It was a bleak, cold outlook.  Presently
down the street came a man with a lighted torch and set the gas-flames
to flickering in every lamp along his way.

Mr. Turner watched him until he had passed out of sight--then he turned
about and came back to the sofa once more.

Miss Blake had raised her head and sat staring blankly before her,
dry-eyed, but with an expression far sadder than tears; the dull,
lifeless look of helpless misery that has not yet been touched with
submission.

"Shall I leave you now?" asked the lawyer softly.  "Perhaps you would
rather be alone.  I can come again--whenever you wish.  Perhaps it
would be better for me to come again when you are stronger--better able
to bear it."

She turned her large eyes upon him in a sort of mute supplication.  All
the light had gone out of them now.  Mr. Turner reseated himself and
continued:

"He died in a hospital in London of a malignant fever.  No one saw him.
He was buried within twenty-four hours, I presume according to the law
in such cases.  Of course, I have no particulars, only the barest
outline of facts.  Undoubtedly I shall receive a letter by the next
steamer, giving details.  It is all desperately sad--heart-breakingly
sad.  Poor fellow!  So young and to die alone among strangers."

Miss Blake stretched out her hands supplicatingly.

"Don't," she pleaded.

"Shall I tell Nan?" Mr. Turner asked after a moment.  "Perhaps it would
be better if I should.  You have undergone enough."

"No, no!" she cried.  "No one must tell her but myself.  But first I
must talk to you about--about--you know when I came here I had reasons
for wishing her not to know who I was.  Now I will tell her.  There is
no more need to withhold anything.  Delia always knew--from the
first--but she never told Nan and she never would have told.  But that
is all over now.  There is no need for secrecy any more.  And I will
stay with her.  I will keep her with me always.  She has no one else
now, and I--I--I am free to do as I please.  If--if he has left her
unprovided for, why, that shall make no difference to her.  I have
plenty and she shall share it with me.  She shall never feel the care
or want of anything that I can supply.  Ah, Mr. Turner, I am glad I
came.  It has been hard, but I am glad I came."

She broke down completely.  Her frail figure shook with shuddering sobs.

But she was not a woman to give way long, and in a moment she regained
her self-control.

"I must have time to think," she said.  "Everything seems so changed
and strange.  I scarcely know where I stand.  The suddenness of it has
been so horrible.  I suppose he must have been ill for a long time--too
ill to write.  And by and by when they took him to the hospital he must
have been unconscious, and so they could not communicate with his
friends.  That would account for it all, his not writing nor receiving
the dispatches--and his friends not knowing where he was."

Mr. Turner nodded.  Then he rose.

"I will leave you now," he said.  "You are completely worn out.  If you
will take my advice you will defer telling Nan until tomorrow.  I fear
the strain will prove too great for you."

She smiled faintly.

"Oh, no," she replied.  "I am stronger than you think.  But the child
shall not be told tonight.  I will leave her in peace for one night
longer.  I will let her get one more good night's rest.  Then
to-morrow, when she is refreshed and strengthened by her sleep she can
learn it all."

The lawyer held out his hand.  "This has been one of the hardest trials
of my life," he said.  "But you have helped me by your bravery and
fortitude.  I thank you from my heart.  Good night!" and in a moment he
was gone.

That evening Miss Blake bade Delia take Nan to the Andrews'.  She wrote
a short note to Ruth's mother in which she begged her to keep the girl
through the evening and make her as happy as she could.  She briefly
stated the reason for her request.

Nan knew that something was being kept from her but she never suspected
what.  She fancied it must be connected with Miss Blake's private
affairs, and she asked no questions.  When she reached the Andrews' her
exuberant spirits reasserted themselves and she spent a gay evening
with Ruth, Mrs. Andrews leading in the fun and seeing that no one
passed a dull moment.  They played all sorts of games, and then finally
Bridget appeared with the crowning delight, a tray upon which a
tempting array of good things was set forth.  How Nan enjoyed it!  She
often thought afterward what a happy evening it was.  At ten o'clock
Delia called for her and she went home through the still night,
thinking all sorts of merry thoughts.  Miss Blake listened with
apparent interest to her description of her evening's jollification,
and when she had finished gave her an especially tender good-night
kiss, saying:

"God bless you, my Nan.  Sleep well, dear, and let us both pray for
strength to bear God's will."

The next morning after breakfast Nan discovered why Miss Blake had bade
her especially to pray for strength.

Poor child!  She felt so utterly weak and helpless in her misery.  At
first she could scarcely realize what had befallen her and she kept
insisting, "It isn't my father that has died.  It is some one else.
How can I feel that he isn't alive?  He can't be dead!  He isn't!  He
isn't!  Why, only yesterday I was expecting he would soon be home.
It's some other man who hasn't got a daughter that loves him so."

But by and by she grew desperate in her wretchedness and then it took
all Miss Blake's influence to restrain her from really wearing herself
out in the abandon of her grief.

But by evening the house was quiet.  Nan's loud sobbing had ceased and
she lay quite still and exhausted, stretched upon the divan in Miss
Blake's room, with her throbbing head in the governess' lap.  A tender
hand stroked her disheveled hair, a tender voice spoke words of comfort
to her, and she was soothed and solaced by both.

"Shall I tell you a story, Nan?" asked Miss Blake at length.

The girl gave a silent nod of assent.

"Well, once upon a time," began the governess in a gentle monotone,
"there lived two girls and they were friends.  They loved each other
dearly.  One was tall and fair and beautiful, and the other was small
and dark, and if people ever thought her even pretty it was because
love lighted their kind eyes and made it seem that what they looked
upon was sweet.

"The first girl had father and mother and a happy home.  The second was
an orphan, having nothing to remind her of the parents she had lost
when she was a baby but the fortune they had left her.  She never knew
what love meant until she met her beautiful friend.  Then she learned.
Oh, how those two girls loved each other!  When Florence, the beautiful
one, found that Isabel had no home she pleaded with her parents to take
her into theirs, and they not only took her to their home but to their
hearts as well.  And so she and her dear friend grew up together like
sisters, and the little lonely girl was not lonely any more, but very,
very happy among those she loved.  Well, time went on, and by and by
when the two girls had become quite young women, the first more
beautiful than ever, the other a little less plain, maybe, something
happened that, in the end, caused them to be separated forever.

"God sent into their lives the self-same experience and into their
hearts the self-same thought.  It was a beautiful experience and a
beautiful thought, but if it was to mean happiness for one, it must be
at the cost of grief to the other.  Perhaps it was because they both
knew this that neither of them told her secret.  But presently it was
decided which was to have the happiness.  It came to the one who
expected it least--who had the least right to expect it.  It came to
Isabel, and for a moment she thought she might accept it.  But it was
only for a moment.  Then she knew that she must relinquish it.  It
would have been base, would it not, my Nan, to have defrauded the
friend who had done so much for her?  And so she, Isabel, left the
house that had been her home for so many years, and quite solitary and
alone sailed across the sea to the other side of the world, and there
she stayed for--well, over a dozen years, my dear.

"It was soon after she went away that your mother--I mean Florence--was
married.  Isabel heard of it and was glad.  And later, when she learned
that a dear little daughter had been born to Florence, she was happier
still.  But then came sad news.  Oh, such sad news!  The beautiful
young mother died, died and left her little baby girl behind her with
only the poor father to take care of it.

"Then, after that, Isabel heard nothing more for a long, long time, for
Florence's good parents were dead and her husband and Isabel
were--well, not at enmity, Nan, but not at peace together.  It was all
owing to a misunderstanding, but that did not alter it.  They were not
friends and Isabel was too proud to write and ask him whether all went
well with him and the little daughter or whether she might perhaps help
to care for the child.  And so years passed and then one day Isabel
felt that she could remain away from America no longer.  All the time
there had been a great longing in her heart to return, but she had
tried to smother it and tell herself that she had no Fatherland; that
America was no more to her than any of the strange countries she had
lived in; that her acquaintances abroad were as much to her as her
friends at home.  But, as I say, by and by she could resist her desire
no longer, and so one day she set sail for America--I think it must
have been after she had been absent for quite fourteen years--and oh!
how her heart beat when she saw the dear land once more.  Well, I must
make my story short, Nan, so I will not tell you how it came about that
she first heard that Florence's little daughter had grown into a tall
girl; that she was living in the old house where Isabel had spent so
many happy years; that her father had gone to some far Eastern country
and left her in the charge of a faithful servant of her mother's who
had loved them all in days gone by.  But she learned all this and more
beside and then something told her that it was her duty to go to
Florence's child and care for her and show her as well as she might how
to be a noble, true, and lovely woman, as her mother had been before
her.  So she went to the little girl as governess and at first the
child was opposed to her, but by and by she--I really think she grew to
love her almost as much as the governess loved the child.  And all this
time the father never knew who was caring for his girl because in the
letters that went to him the governess was spoken of by but part of her
name.  She chose to live incognito, you know what that is, Nan, because
she feared if he knew who was serving his child as governess he would
write to her in his proud fashion and say:

"No; I need no one to care for my daughter for love.  Whomever I employ
I will pay.  You are a wealthy woman.  You need not work for money.  My
few poor dollars are nothing to you.  Besides--"

"And then I think, Nan, he would have referred to the old disagreement
and it would all have been very painful, and she would have had to go
away and been lonely ever after and have left undone her duty to
Florence's child.  So she lived quietly in the old house with the
little girl and the servant and all went well for a year and
then--well, then, dear Nan, I think I need not tell what happened then.
But, oh, my dear, you are my own little girl--Florence's child and I
loved her, ah!  I loved her so.  For her sake you are mine now.  Never
say that you are 'all alone' again.  I have taken you as a sacred
trust.  Come to me, Nan, for I am lonely too, I am lonely too."

CHAPTER XXI

ANOTHER CHRISTMAS

It was Christmas eve.  Nan was sitting before the dining-room fire
curled up in a huge arm chair thinking.  Her pale face had grown
wonderfully sweet during the last few weeks; the curves about her mouth
had softened; her eyes had lost their keen sparkle and gained a softer
light instead.  She seemed to have undergone a complete transformation,
and any one seeing the headstrong hoyden of the year before would have
found it difficult to recognize her in this gentle-mannered girl with
her serene brow and patient eyes, to whom suffering had taught so hard
a lesson.  Her black dress and her parted hair gave her a wonderfully
meek look.  But Nan was not meek.  She was merely controlled.  The same
hot passions still rose in her breast, but she tried to restrain them
now.

This evening she was thinking over all that had happened during the
past year; especially she was trying to project her thoughts into the
future, and to imagine what would occur in the years to come.  She had
not yet become accustomed to the idea of life without her father.  It
seemed to her that he must be alive, and she often waked up in the
night from such a vivid dream of him that it seemed as though he really
stood beside her, and that she might feel his hand if she stretched
forth her own in the dark.  It was difficult to reconcile herself to
living without the hope of his return; it was hard to convince herself
that she must never look forward to receiving a letter from him again.
But she knew it must be accomplished, and the effort would help to make
a noble woman of her.

As she sat there in the dim room, with only the fire to light it, she
wondered whether anything could make of her as noble a woman as was her
"Aunt Isabel."  In her heart she felt not.  Aunt Isabel was simply
perfect in the girl's sight, and if she could ever have been brought to
doubt her perfection, why, there was Delia to prove it with her
emphatic:

"No, ma'am!  There ain't no one in this world like her.  She is the
best, the generousest, the most self-sacrificin' soul on earth--that
she is, and I've known her ever since she was a child.  If any one was
to ask me the name of the woman I've most call to honor an' love, I'd
say 'twas Isabel Blake Severance an' never stop a minute to think it
over."

And both Nan and Delia had long ago decided that while other women
might be more beautiful, no one could have softer, sunnier hair than
Aunt Isabel, nor truer, tenderer eyes, nor a prettier nose nor a
sweeter mouth.  And Nan was quite confident that if one hunted the
whole globe over one could not find dimples more entirely winning nor
hands whose touch was so absolutely soothing and soft.

But Miss Severance could never be brought to admit these important
facts, though Nan often sought to convince her of their truth.  She was
too busy a woman to have time to think whether she were beautiful or
not.

"Good is the thing," she would say, in her brisk fashion.  "If I can
look in the glass and see the reflection of a good woman there, I have
no right to regret that she is not a beautiful one."

Just now she was upstairs, busied with some matter of mysterious
importance from which Nan was excluded.  She and Delia had been shut
into her room all the afternoon.  Nan had ample time and opportunity
for the manufacture of her own Christmas gifts, Aunt Isabel being so
much occupied, behind closed door, with hers.

For quite a time now Nan had been forced to station herself in the
regions below stairs, where she would hear the bell if it rang, so that
Delia might be free to give all her attention to Miss Severance.
Evidently great things were in operation above.  Nan wondered what it
could all be about.

Christmas had lost much of its joyousness this year, but still there
was a little flavor of merriment left.  Aunt Isabel had no sympathy
with the hark-from-the-tombs-a-doleful-sound attitude.  She thought it
was one's duty to be as cheery and hopeful as possible, and not to add
to the misery of the world at large by forcing it to witness one's
private grief.  She and Nan had their hours of tender mourning and
sincere regret, but it was always Miss Severance's desire that no
unwholesome brooding should be indulged in by either of them.

So the girl tried to restrain the tears that would rise at the thought
of these saddened holidays, and endeavored to bring her mind to bear on
more happy subjects.  She thought of her plans for the next day; she
made a mental recount of the gifts she had prepared, and then, somehow
against her will, her memory took her back to that morning when she had
heard of her father's death and listened to Miss Severance's story, and
she lived over again those intense moments when it almost seemed to her
her mother had been restored to her in this rare friend.  The simple
history had a peculiar fascination for the girl, and she liked to think
that it was here, in these very rooms, that it all had been enacted.

She liked to look into those books of Miss Severance's that had her
mother's name upon the fly-leaf, and she liked to think that they were
given to "Bell with Florence's fond love."

Miss Severance had several photographs of her mother as a girl that Nan
had never seen, and she was fond of looking them over and exclaiming at
the "old-fashioned" frocks and quaintly arranged hair, and wondering
whether this happy-looking girl ever discovered the sacrifice her
friend had made for her.

One day Nan asked Miss Severance as much, but Aunt Isabel had shaken
her head gravely and said:

"No, Nan, she never did.  And don't think of that part of the story, my
dear.  It was no more than I ought to have done.  You must not make a
piece of heroism of it.  I only told it to you because unless I had, it
would have been difficult to explain why I left her and went so far
away."

"Aunt Isabel," Nan said, "won't you tell me just what it was you gave
up?"  But Miss Severance shook her head.

What the girl could not at all comprehend was the fact of any one's
being "not at peace" with Aunt Isabel.  Aunt Isabel, who never was
unjust nor unkind, nor anything but generous and good to every one.
She thought if she could have spoken to her father she could have
convinced him that he was mistaken about Aunt Isabel.  But that was
impossible now.  Her father--again the hot tears came surging up, and
her breast began to heave.

Suddenly she started.  What was that?  She jumped to her feet.
Somebody was turning the knob of the street door and fitting a key in
the lock.  At first it was her impulse to cry out, but she mastered
herself and ran quickly through the parlor and stood bravely on the
threshold waiting for the door to open and admit the intruder.  Her
heart beat like a trip-hammer in her side, and the pulses in her wrists
and temples throbbed painfully.  She saw the door move inward, she felt
the rush of cold outer air upon her face, and then--

In a moment she was locked in two strong arms, her head was pressed
against a dear, broad chest, and she was crying "Father!  Father!" in a
perfect ecstasy of rapture and a tempest of tears.

For a few moments neither of them said a single word.  They just clung
to each other and wept--the strong man as well as the slender girl.

They seemed to lose all other thought in the joy of the meeting.  Then
somehow they found themselves in the library, and Nan, still sobbing
for very happiness, was listening to her father as he told her how, for
many months, he had been ill, but had tried to fight it off and
overcome it, because he was so anxious to get home, and he could not
bear to think he might be prevented.  Then, just before his ship
sailed, and after he had enrolled himself among the list of passengers,
and bidden good-bye to those he knew, he was stricken down and for
weeks lay unconscious, between life and death, as utterly unbefriended
as though he had been in the midst of a wilderness.  How he came to
recover he never knew, but it seemed as though his great longing for
home gave him strength to battle through the dreadful fever.  Then,
almost too feeble to stand, he was taken to the ship and borne to
England, his body weak from suffering, but his heart strong with hope.

The voyage was a severe one, and before he reached London he had a
relapse, so that when they entered port he had to be carried ashore,
and, too ill to know or care what happened to him, was taken to a
lodging-house and nursed back to health once more by the keeper
herself, whose son was the steward of the ship on which he had crossed.

"You can fancy, Nannie, that I had only one thought all that time--to
get back to you.  The first move I was able to make was to the ship,
and I sailed without having seen or spoken to a soul I knew in London.