"Huh!" sneered Nan, wrathfully, "that means, I s'pose, that you intend to let her. Never talk to me of turn-coats any more, Delia Connor!"

Delia caught up a coal-hod and strode deliberately off toward the cellar stairs. When she came back she was laden down with kindlings and coal.

"What you going to do with those?" demanded Nan, imperatively.

"Build a fire in the library. I guess a spark'll look good to the poor little soul--coming in out of the cold and wet."

This was the last straw. Nan's eyes flashed, and she tore after Delia upstairs, scolding as fast as the words would come.

"The idea! The idea! A fire! 'Poor little soul!' And many's the time I've come in out of the cold and you haven't even as much as lit the gas! Oh, no; never mind me! I can come in out of the cold till every tooth in my head chatters, and you wouldn't care a straw. Why, Delia Connor, we never have that fire lit. You just know we don't!

There hasn't been a fire in that grate since daddy went away! You know very well there hasn't, and now the first thing you do is to light it for that horrid governess-woman that's going to boss you 'round like anything, and make me do all sorts of hateful things. I tell you what it is, Delia Connor, you don't care a single thing about me. I know just how 'twill be. You'll help her to do anything she wants to, and you'll never stand up for me a bit. It's mean of you, Delia! It's downright mean of you. And it's just because she's got those dimples and things, and smiles at you as if you were her best friend. But she needn't think she can manage me. I'm not going to be ordered about by her, if she has got a soft voice and shiny eyes!"

Nan and the fire sputtered and blazed as though they were trying to see which could outdo the other, and Delia stood by looking first at this one and then at that with a good deal less fear of the sparks from the grate than of those from Nan's eyes.

She knew better than to try to pacify the girl when her temper was at such a white-heat, and she inwardly wondered what would happen if the governess should come down while it was yet at its worst. As if in answer to her question they heard the sound of an opening door above, and immediately after Miss Blake's light steps upon the stairs. Nan bit a word off square in the middle and set her lips tightly together.

Delia removed the "blower" from the grate and the dancing flames leaped high up the chimney and sent a ruddy glow about the room. The only sounds to be heard were the comfortable ticking of the tall clock in the corner and the low purring of the fire behind its bars. Miss Blake came down the hall and paused on the library threshold.

"Oh, how jolly!" she cried, clapping her hands like a delighted child and running forward eagerly to the hearth. "How perfectly jolly!

Don't you think an open fire is the most comfortable thing in the world? And I always loved this one particularly--I mean this kind,"

she corrected herself quickly.

Nan made no response. She sat in her father's study-chair as stiff and stolid as a lay-figure in a shop window, with her lips drawn primly over her teeth.

Miss Blake was, or pretended to be, unconscious of her att.i.tude, however, and went on talking as easily as though she had the most appreciative of listeners.

"When I was a little girl I used to love to cuddle down here on the hearth-rug--I mean I used to love to cuddle down on the hearth-rug and look into the burning coals. I used to see all sorts of wonderful things in the flames. They used to tell me I'd 'singe my curly pow a-biggin' castles in the air,' but I didn't mind, did I--I mean I didn't mind," she caught herself up quickly.

Delia coughed behind her hand and hurriedly left the room in order to get Miss Blake's supper, which she meant to serve upstairs for the occasion.

As soon as she was gone the new governess turned toward Nan in a strange apologetic sort of way and said:

"I think, if you'll excuse me, I'll just cuddle down on the rug as I used to do when--when I was a little girl. It seems so good to get back--to an open fire that it makes me quite homesick. You won't mind, will you?"

Nan gave a grunt that was meant for "No," and the new governess plumped down upon the floor with her chin in her palms and her elbows on her knees, looking so much like a little girl that for a second Nan had a wild impulse to plump down beside her and inquire, by way of opening the acquaintance--

"Say, does your hair curl like that naturally--or does your mother put it up at night?" or something equally introductory and to the point.

But of course she did no such thing, and when Delia reappeared she found them regarding the fire in perfect silence.

At the sound of her step Miss Blake lifted her head and gave Nan a bewildering smile.

"How stupid I have been! Do forgive me!" she said. "We have been having what the Germans call 'an English conversation,' haven't we? I was thinking so hard I quite forgot you--and myself. Ah, what a pretty supper! But I put you to so much trouble," and she turned on Delia two very grateful eyes, while she jumped to her feet with the lightest possible ease.

Delia beamed down upon her beatifically and gave an extra touch to the dainty tray. Nan from her chair scowled darkly upon the whole performance. Delia had deserted her cause; had gone over bodily to the enemy--that was plain. But she needn't flaunt her defection in Nan's very face. Why, it was positively disgraceful the way Delia fetched and carried for this person already, and looked, all the while, as if she could hardly keep from dancing for very joy at the privilege.

Well, this governess needn't think that Nan was the kind to be won over by a few smiles and some flickering dimples. When Nan said a thing she meant it and she stuck to it, too. She wasn't a turn-coat like some folks she knew.

"'Alas, alas! my dear old home--! To think that anybody who isn't wanted should come and push herself like this into my dear old home!

Oh, father, her eyes are like--' Good gracious! all that description part would have to be changed!" Nan pulled herself together with a visible jerk. How could she speak of "needly eyes" when those of the governess were so deep and soft and gray that they made you feel like--no, they didn't either; but they weren't needly all the same.

No! That whole description part would have to be changed. Bother!

Well, if it came to that she guessed she could do it! "Her hated form haunts me in my sleep, and I dream of her all night as I see her in the daytime--little and dear, with her hair all shimmery and soft and her eyes kind of kissing you softly all the time, and--" Goodness! that would never do! Why it would be crazy to call on one's father to rescue one from a person like that. Well, she'd leave out the description altogether, that's what she'd do. She--

"Did you speak?" asked the governess, in her musical voice, turning toward Nan inquiringly, and then the girl suddenly realized that she had been mumbling her thoughts aloud.

"No, I didn't," she responded, with irritation. "It was too bad," she declared to herself it was, "that after all the trouble she had taken to learn the thing by heart, she should be pestered to death by having to make changes in it this way--at the last minute, too. Why wasn't Miss Blake tall and lanky and needly-eyed and a fright, she'd like to know? It was just like her, though! So contrary! To change about and upset all Nan's plans. Well, as long as there was so much fuss about the thing, she s'posed she'd give it up."

"She's so little, it'll be easy enough to manage her. I guess it isn't worth while. I can just say, to-morrow or next day, 'Miss Blake, I've come to the conclusion you don't suit,' and she'll go right off. She may cry a little, but I won't mind that; and if she begs to stay, I'll say, 'Now there's no use teasing! When I once say a thing I mean it!'

and that will settle her once for all."

Delia was pressing the governess to take more supper when Nan again waked to what was going on about her.

"Why, you don't eat any more than you used--I mean than a bird. Do take a little more chicken, do! And a cup of coffee, nice and hot, that's a good--lady!"

It was really too humiliating! It was more than Nan could bear. She sprang to her feet and without a word--with nothing but a glance of withering scorn at Delia--swept out of the room and upstairs to bed.

Miss Blake looked after her with strange, wondering eyes, but made no attempt to follow her. She just turned to Delia and stretched out her hands.

"O Delia! Delia!" she faltered, brokenly.

The woman came to her and took both the little hands in hers. "Bless you, dearie!" she cried. "That I ever lived to see the day! There, there, lamb, don't cry so, Allanah! See, I'm not crying, am I now?"

sobbed she, kneeling beside the stranger and hugging her knees wildly.

"Oh, but it's glad I am to see your dear face again! Now tell me all about it--how you came to know we need you so bad?"

CHAPTER V

GETTING ACQUAINTED

Nan, in spite of the fact that she a.s.sured herself her heart was broken, fell asleep as soon as her head touched the pillow. She slept heavily customarily but to-night her rest was fitful and troubled. She kept dreaming strange dreams that caused her to twitch in her sleep and give queer little cries of distress and moans of fretfulness.

Sometimes she seemed to be trying to overtake something that was constantly eluding her. First it was a long, lank creature with piercing eyes and a k.n.o.b at the back of its head which it seemed to be Nan's duty, not to say pleasure, to shoot off with a paper of needles.

Then it was something she must recollect or be put to death for forgetting; some awful harangue that she had been doomed to deliver before Delia and a vast crowd of other people, all of whom were staring at her regretfully and murmuring to one another that it was a shame such a hoyden should be allowed to live; and again it was some dainty little creature with tender eyes and shining hair that Nan longed to follow but could not because of something inside her breast that held her back and would not let her call.

Miss Blake did not go to her room until very late. She and Delia kept up a steady stream of conversation until long after midnight, and even then the governess would not have paused if Delia had not been struck with sudden compunction.

"Dear heart alive!" she cried, scrambling to her feet hastily as the clock chimed twelve. "Here you've been wore out with tiredness and excitement and I keep you up till all hours pressin' you with questions that you ain't fit to answer, just as if we wouldn't have time an' to spare together for the rest of our lives, please Heaven! Now go to bed, dearie, so you'll be all rested and fresh in the morning."

Miss Blake shook her head. "No, not all the rest of our lives together, Delia," she cried, hurriedly; "it can only be for a year at most. You said it would be a year, didn't you? Well, then, you know I could not stay after that."

"Go to bed, dearie," was Delia's sole response. "And may you sleep easy and have no dreams."

She took her upstairs herself, just as if the governess had been a little girl; and was not satisfied until she had brushed out the ma.s.ses of shining hair and woven them into a long, ruddy braid behind. Then she smoothed the pillow lovingly and with another hearty "sleep well"

went down stairs to "do up" her dishes and get the house closed for the night.

When she finally stole up to her own room through the pitchy halls she was glad to see that there was no light in the governess' room and that all was darkness and silence within.

"Good! She's asleep by this time, the dear!" murmured the faithful soul, and was soon snoring peacefully herself, quite worn out with the excitement of the evening.

But Miss Blake was not asleep. Her eyes stared widely into the darkness and her brain was spinning with all sorts of teasing thoughts.

She listened to the ticking of her watch beneath her pillow--to the m.u.f.fled chime of the tall clock in the room below--to the gentle rattle of plaster inside the walls where some hidden mouse was scuttling in search of a stolen supper, and tried to soothe herself into a doze but failed and tried and failed again.