Nan’s eyebrows went up quite as disdainfully as ever Miss Romaine’s could. “I’m sure,” she replied haughtily, “we got along perfectly well before we knew Mr. Wells, and I don’t see but that we can continue to do so.” Yet in her heart of hearts she was conscious of a feeling of bitter jealousy, and if she had been alone the tears would have risen to her eyes.
“The proper spirit, my dear; hear your Aunt Jo tell you. We’ve plenty of good all around friends; we don’t want any of the summer sunshine, fair weather, take-you-when-I-can’t-get-any-one-else kind.”
“It strikes me,” spoke up Mary Lee, “that if you all were so deadly indifferent as you try to appear, you would not make such a to-do about it. For my part, I think you are a little unjust to Mr. Wells.”
“And why?” Nan asked with still the “up-eyebrow” manner.
“Because so far he has shown no sign of neglecting us, and I am sure you wouldn’t expect him to give up his friends on our account. Suppose the case were reversed, and some of our best friends, like Charlotte and Carter and Phil Lewis, were to come, would we turn a cold shoulder on them because we happened to have met Mr. Wells?”
“But suppose they were scornful of our friends and refused to meet them, would we countenance it? and wouldn’t we tell them to go to Halifax if they couldn’t join the crowd?” Jo was speaking.
“Not if they were staying with us, were our guests, so to speak, and the crowd happened to be two or three miles away. Besides I don’t see that we have given them a chance to prove their intentions. They have only just come. You couldn’t expect them to rush off to see us the first thing.”
“That’s so,” Jo conceded. “Well, we’ll give them a chance before we condemn them utterly, won’t we, Nan?”
“Oh, of course. I dare say Mary Lee is right,” Nan admitted. She was glad that her sister’s cooler judgment had set the matter in a different light. It was certainly not to be expected that the young man should have appeared the very day that his friends had come, nor that Dr. Paul should have done so either, for as Mr. Wells’ guest he was bound to show courtesy to these friends of his. “There’s one person who won’t go back on us, I’ll venture to say,” she spoke her thought aloud, “and that is Dr. Paul.”
“Oh, we can count on him just as surely as we can count on the sun’s rising every morning,” Jo agreed with Nan, “and we’ll pump him to find out how things are going on up there.”