She clenched her fists and wished for the hundredth time that she had never been born. She had been a bone of contention all her life, and, even when the two families were not fighting over her, the Bartlett blood was warring with the Martel blood within her. Her standards were hopelessly confused; she did not know what she wanted except that she wanted pa.s.sionately to be let alone.

"Nellie!" called a gentle voice on the other side of the door. "Are you ready for dinner?"

"Don't want any dinner," she mumbled from the depths of a pillow.

The door-handle turned softly and the voice persisted:

"You must unlock the door, dearie; I want to speak to you."

Eleanor flung herself off the bed and opened the door. "I tell you, I don't want any dinner, Aunt Enid," she declared petulantly.

Miss Enid drew her down on the bed beside her and regarded her with pensive persuasion. "I know, Nelchen; I often feel like that. But you must come down and make a pretense of eating. It upsets your grandmother to have any one of us absent from meals."

"Everything I do upsets her!" cried Eleanor with tragic insistence. "I can't please her--there's no use trying. Why does she treat me the way she does? Why does she sometimes almost seem to hate me?"

Miss Enid's eyes involuntarily glanced at the picture of Eleanor's mother over the desk, taken in the doublet and hose of _Rosalind_.

"Hush, child; you mustn't say such awful things," she said, drawing the girl close and stroking her hair. "Mother adores you. Think of all she has done for you ever since you were a tiny baby. What other girl of your acquaintance has her own car, all the pretty clothes she can wear, and as much pin-money as she can spend?"

"But that's not what I _want_!" cried Eleanor tragically. "I want to _be_ something and to _do_ something. I feel like I am in prison here. I'm not good and resigned like you and Aunt Isobel, and I simply refuse to go through life standing grandmother's tyranny."

Poor Eleanor, so intolerably sensitive to contacts, so hopelessly confused in her bearings, sitting red-eyed and miserable, kicking her feet against the side of the bed, looked much more like a naughty child than like the radiant Lady Bountiful who had dispensed favors and received homage in the hospital a few hours before.

So swift was the sympathetic action of her nerves that any change in her physical condition affected her whole nature, making her an enigma to herself as well as to others. Even as she sat there rebellious and defiant, her eyes fell upon the small morocco box on her pillow, and she picked it up and opened it.

"Oh, Aunt Enid!" she cried in instant remorse. "Just look what she's given me! Her string of pearls! The ones she wore in the portrait! And just think of what I've been saying about her. I'm a beast, a regular little beast!"

And with characteristic impetuosity she flung herself on Miss Enid's neck and burst into tears.

CHAPTER 6

The sun was getting ready to set on Sunday afternoon when a tall, trim-looking figure turned the corner of the street leading to the Martels' and broke into a run. In one hand he carried a large suit-case, and in the other he held a bead chain wrapped in tissue-paper. In the breast pocket of his uniform was a paper stating that Quinby Graham was thereby honorably discharged from the U.S.A.

Whether it was his enforced rest, or his state of mind, or a combination of the two, it is impossible to say; but at least ten pounds had been added to his figure, the hollows had about gone from his eyes, and a natural color had returned to his face. But the old cough remained, as was evident when he presented himself breathless at the Martels' door and demanded of Ca.s.s:

"Has she gone?"

"Who?"

"Miss Bartlett."

"I believe she's fixing to go now. What's it to you?"

"Oh, I just want to say good-by," Quin threw off with a great show of indifference. "She was awful good to me out at the hospital."

"Oh, I see." Then Ca.s.s dismissed the subject for one of far more importance. "Are you out for keeps? Have you come to stay?"

"You bet I have. How long has she been here?"

"Who?"

"Miss Bartlett, I tell you."

"Oh! I don't know. All day, I reckon. I got to take her home now in a minute, but I'll be back soon. Don't you go anywhere till I come back."

Quin seized his arm: "Ca.s.s, I'll take her home for you. I don't mind a bit, honest I don't. I need some exercise."

"Old lady'd throw a fit," objected Ca.s.s. "Old grandmother, I mean.

Regular Tartar. Old aunts are just as bad. They devil the life out of Nell, except when she's deviling the life out of them."

"How do you mean?" Quin encouraged him.

"I mean Nell's a handful all right. She kicks over the traces every time she gets a chance. I don't blame her. They're a rotten bunch of sn.o.bs, and she knows it."

"Well, I could leave her at the door," Quin urged. "I wouldn't let her in for anything for the world. But I got to talk to her, I tell you; I got to thank her----"

Meanwhile, in the room above the young lady under discussion was leisurely adjusting a new and most becoming hat before a cracked mirror while she discussed a subject of perennial interest to the eternal feminine.

"Rose," she was asking, "what's the first thing you notice about a man?"

Rose, sitting on the side of the bed nursing little Bino, the latest addition to the family, answered promptly:

"His mouth, of course. I wouldn't marry a man who showed his gums when he laughed, not if every hair of his head was strung with diamonds!"

The visualization of this unpleasant picture threw Eleanor into peals of laughter which upset the carefully acquired angle of the new hat, to say nothing of the nerves of the young gentleman just arrived in the hall below.

"I wasn't thinking of his looks only," she said; "I mean everything about him."

"Why, I guess it's whether he notices me," said Rose after deliberation.

"Exactly," agreed Eleanor. "Not only you or me, but girls. Take Ca.s.s, for instance; girls might just as well be broomsticks to Ca.s.s, all except Fan Loomis. Now, when Captain Phipps looks at you----"

"He never would," said Rose; "he'd look straight over my head. I'll tell you who is a better example--Mr. Graham."

Eleanor smiled reminiscently. "Oh, Sergeant Slim? _he's_ thrilled, all right! Always looks as if he couldn't wait a minute to hear what you are going to say next."

"He's not as susceptible as he looks," Rose p.r.o.nounced from her vantage-point of seniority. "He's just got a way with him that fools people. Ca.s.s says girls are always crazy about him, and that he never cares for any of them more than a week."

"Much Ca.s.s knows about it!" said Ca.s.s's cousin, pulling on her long gloves. Then she dismissed the subject abruptly: "Rose, if I tell you something will you swear not to tell?"

"Never breathe it."

"Captain Phipps is coming up to Baltimore for the Easter vacation."

"Does your grandmother know?"