“Oh, dear me—no!” exclaimed her cousin. “You’re so loud and noisy. And do, do call me by my proper name.”
“I forgot. Sure, I’ll call you anything you say,” returned the Western girl, smiling at her. Meanwhile she was moving about the room, deftly putting things to rights.
“I’m going to tell father the minute he comes home!” wailed Hortense, ignoring her cousin for the time and going back to her immediate troubles. “I am left all alone—and I’m sick—and nobody cares—and—and——”
“Where do you keep your caps, Hortense?” interrupted Helen. “And if you’ll let me, I’ll brush your hair and make it look pretty. And then you get into a fresh nightgown——”
“Oh, I couldn’t sit up,” moaned Hortense. “I really couldn’t. I’m too weak.”
“I’ll show you how. Let me fix the pillows—so! And so! There—nothing like trying; is there? You’re comfortable; aren’t you?”
“We-ell——”
Helen was already manipulating the hairbrush. She did it so well, and managed to arrange Hortense’s really beautiful hair so simply yet easily on her head that the latter quite approved of it—and said so—when she looked into her hand-mirror.
Then Helen got her into a chair, in a fresh robe and a pretty kimono, while she made the bed—putting on new sheets and cases for the pillows so that all should be sweet and clean. Of course, Hortense wasn’t really sick—only lazy. But she thought she was sick and Helen’s attentions pleased the spoiled girl.
“Why, you’re not such a bad little thing, Helen,” she said, dipping into a box of chocolates on the stand by her bedside. Chocolates were about all the medicine Hortense took during this “bad attack.” And she was really grateful—in her way—to her cousin.