"Ugh!" she exclaimed, "how I hate it--and her!"

It was a cheerless morning. The temperature had risen and a thick rain was falling. There was nothing to do out-of-doors so Nan remained within. It was Friday, and one of Delia's sweeping days. She was shut up in the draughty parlor with a mob-cap on her head "cleaning for dear life," as she expressed it. After a brief experience of the cold and discomfort of open windows and clouds of dust, Nan gave up trying to talk to Delia and wandered out of the parlor as disconsolately as she had wandered into it. By and by she heard Miss Blake's door open and close and saw the governess come forth, leave the house, and walk rapidly down the street. She turned in at the Newton's gate and disappeared behind the vestibule door. Nan had flown to the window to gaze after her.

"Whatever can she want there," wondered the girl.

The question bothered her. She had not been able to get direct news of Ruth's condition because she had not dared inquire again after the way she had been treated, but in a round-about manner she had heard that the child had a fever.

"What fever?" she wondered. "Do people die of fever? If she dies will that be because I left her on the ground while I ran to get that milkman to help carry her home?"

Miss Blake was not gone long, but it was luncheon-time when she returned.

"Ah, good morning!" she said, pleasantly, to Nan, who happened to be in the hall. "I have pleasant news for you. Your little friend Ruth Newton is better, and her mamma says she would be grateful to you and me if we would come in once in a while and help her to amuse the poor child. Will you go with me to-morrow? Mrs. Newton said particularly that she hoped you would."

A curious expression flitted across Nan's face.

"Mrs. Newton hates me," she announced. "She doesn't want me to see Ruth."

Miss Blake drew off her gloves carefully.

"I have explained certain matters to Mrs. Newton, Nan," she said, "and she is quite satisfied that she was partly mistaken in her judgment of you the other day. She says that she is willing to apologize for some of her accusations, and she has written you a little note. Now, come, and we will both go down to luncheon. I see Delia is here to tell us it is served."

"She takes it for granted I'll go," thought Nan, and indeed she went quite willingly, and what was more, remained respectfully seated in her place until Miss Blake gave her permission to depart by rising herself.

CHAPTER VI

WHEELS WITHIN WHEELS

"I think, Delia," said the governess, as Nan was about to go upstairs, "if you have an ax, or something of the sort, I'll try to unbox my bicycle."

Nan came to an abrupt halt. Bicycle! The word went through her with an electric thrill, and sent her blood tingling. Then she dragged herself unwillingly away. What had she to do with the bicycle of a woman she hated.

"O Nan!" Miss Blake exclaimed, before the girl's lagging footsteps had carried her halfway up the staircase, "I'm sure your strong young arms can help us with this big elephant. Will you lend a hand?"

Now could the governess have suspected that that was precisely what Nan had been longing to do? But she could not have lingered unless she had been given the excuse by Miss Blake herself. Had the request been made to serve as that excuse?

Nan did not stop to question. She came flinging down stairs, two steps at a time, and Miss Blake and Delia smiled above her head as she bent down, wrenching and tugging with her main strength at the boards and stubborn nails, too excited to know that half the force she used would have served her better.

"There! that's my bicycle!" announced Miss Blake, displaying the beautiful machine with the pride of a possessor, when the last stay had been unscrewed, and the slender wheel stood revealed in all the glory of its spotless nickel-plate and rubber tires.

Nan gazed at it in speechless admiration. It had been the dream of her life to own such a machine, but she had pleaded for one in vain. Mr.

Turner had explained to her that what money he held in trust for her was no more than served to pay for her running expenses.

"You know your father is not a rich man," he had said, "and lately he has met with losses. He wishes you to be brought up under home influences rather than at a boarding-school among strangers. He desires you to be well educated, and naturally all this costs. Your father is willing to make many sacrifices that you may be well provided for, but he is not able to indulge you in a matter like this of the bicycle. I wish I did not have to refuse you, but I think with him, that your most important need should be supplied first, and if after that little remains for mere indulgence, you must be satisfied. By and by you will see that his course is best, if you do not see it already."

But Nan had never been able to feel that it was best that she should not have a bicycle. Now that the new governess had come and had proved so "horrid," she felt it still less. "Half the money she gets would buy me a first-rate safety," she had thought often and often and often, as she groaned over her father's perversity.

But here was one of the wonderful affairs actually in the house, and if it did not belong to her, what of that? What was it the governess was just saying?

"I am quite sure you could use this wheel if we should shift the saddle up a bit, that is, if you care to ride. As soon as the ground is clear I will teach you if you like."

Nan's face was radiant. "Oh, I know how," she said. "I've practiced lots on--on--a person's I know. Only it wasn't a--a--girl's wheel.

But I can ride."

Miss Blake was rubbing down the slender spokes with a piece of chamois skin.

"You are welcome to use mine, then," she said simply.

Nan choked out a meagre "Thank you." It was not a gracious acknowledgment, but the governess accepted it, and really felt a glow of satisfaction in having called out even so much as an acceptance of her favor from her arbitrary young charge.

"Small favors thankfully received," she thought with a smile at her own humility.

Nan stood leaning against the wall with her hands behind her, watching the manoeuvres of the leathern rag as it flashed up and down the nickel spokes and around and about the hubs, guided by the dexterous hand of the little governess.

"Yes, I think we can pa.s.s many a jolly hour on this machine," resumed Miss Blake, "after the ground is clear of snow, and after we are clear of our lessons. We'll begin our studies on Monday, Nan. That will be commencing with the new week, and we must be very conscientious about our work before we indulge in any play."

"There!" thought Nan, with a rush of antagonism, "I might have known she'd make some kind of a fuss before she'd let me use it. I guess she's sorry she promised in the first place, and wants to kind of back out of it. Oh, well, I might have known. Now she'll pile on lessons and things till there's no time for anything else. That's her way of getting out of it."

But she made no comment. She stood kicking her heel against the surbase, silently watching the sparkling machine. Presently she turned and stalked upstairs without a word.

Delia gave Miss Blake an apologetic glance, but the governess composedly rose, and, stowing her property safely away against the closet wall, closed the door upon it and with a kind word to the woman beside her went upstairs as though nothing had happened.

She knew what was in Nan's mind. She could read it as distinctly as if the sudden wrinkles on her forehead and the quick set of her obstinate jaw had been printed text.

"Poor child!" thought the governess, "how she hates study and--me. How she rebels against restraint. So she thinks I am trying to take back my word. No wonder that makes her furious."

She went into her room and closed the door, but after a moment she came back and opened it again.

"Nan might feel shut out," she said to herself, and so she left it standing invitingly ajar that in case the girl cared to come in she would not have to knock. She smiled to herself as she did it. She knew well enough Nan would not care to come in. "Still there might be a chance!"--she left the door open on the chance.

The more Nan thought of Delia's baseness the more she inwardly raged against it. She sat in her own room with her feet over the register and munched caramels and nursed her grievance all the afternoon. Delia was miserable. She had tried by every means in her power to win at least a look from the girl, but all her attempts were repelled and she was treated with an overbearance that cut her to the quick. At last she could stand it no longer. She left her work and went upstairs "to have it out with Nan" and be done with it.

She knocked repeatedly at her bedroom door, but the girl obstinately refused to utter the word of admittance. Delia was not to be daunted, however, by this, and at last, turning the k.n.o.b, she walked boldly in and confronted Nan squarely.

"See here, Nan," she began without waiting, "I want to know what's the matter with you that you treat me so? Me that has waited on you hand and foot and tended you night and day since you was a little baby?"

The girl did not deign to raise her eyes from her book--or else they were so rapidly filling with tears that she did not dare to do so.

Delia gulped. "Can't you answer a civil question?" she faltered, trying to be firm and failing utterly.

Nan cast her book to the floor and sprang up to face the woman with blazing cheeks and eyes that flashed angry fire.

"You'd better ask me what's the matter, Delia Connor!" she burst out in a trembling voice. "As if you didn't know! Do you s'pose I'll bear everything? It's bad enough--your being such an awful turn-coat! You went over to her side the first thing, and every time she bosses me you just stand there and let her do it and never say a word. You let her order me about like everything and never stand up for me a bit. Her--a perfect stranger! Somebody you never saw in all your life before! But that isn't the worst of it! Do you s'pose I'm going to stand your coming to my door and listening at the key-hole when I was rehearsing and then going and telling on me--telling her all I was going to do to her, I'd like to know? You just wanted to get on the right side of her, and it was the meanest thing I ever heard of in all my life. You came and peeked at me when I was rehearsing and then went and told her, and I s'pose you both laughed and had a fine time over it. You thought you were very smart, didn't you? But you got there too soon, Delia Connor, for I had made up my mind I wouldn't do it, so there! But now you've both been so mean, I don't care who knows what I was going to do. I hope you told her that I don't want her here. I hope you told her every bit of that thing I learned by heart on purpose to recite to her. I hope you repeated every word of it. It's true and I hope she knows it. I hope--"

"For the land's sake, Nan, do be still," broke out Delia at last after a dozen futile attempts to stem the tide of the girl's anger. "I didn't listen nor peek nor anything, and you scream so loud she'll hear every word you say. You--now be quiet and let me speak--you walked in your sleep last night. You went into her room and said off a whole lot of balderdash to her--enough to set her against you for the rest of her life--if she ever finds out you really meant it."