“Arline, you're an angel of goodness!” she cried brokenly. “You're the best friend I ever had in my life—I've had many who petted me and flattered me—but you—you do things! I'm ashamed—because I haven't loved you every minute since I first saw you. I judged you—I mean—oh, you're pure, shining gold inside, instead of—”
“Oh, git out!” Arline was compelled to gulp twice before she could say even that much. “I don't shine nowhere—inside er out. I know that well enough. I never had no chancet to shine. It's always been wore off with hard knocks. But I like shiny folks all right—when they're fine clear through, and—”
“Arline—dear, I do love you. I always shall. I—”
Arline loosened her clasp and jumped up precipitately.
“Git out!” she repeated bashfully. “If you git me to cryin', Val Peyson, I'll wish you was in Halifax. You go to bed, 'n' go to sleep, er I'll—” She almost ran from the room. Outside, she stopped in a darkened corner of the hallway and stood for some minutes with her checked gingham apron pressed tightly over her face, and several times she sniffed audibly. When she finally returned to the kitchen her nose was pink, her eyelids were pink, and she was extremely petulant when she caught Minnie eying her curiously.
Val had refused to eat any supper, and, beyond telling Arline that she had decided to leave Manley and return to her mother in Fern Hill, she had not explained anything very clearly—her colorless face, for instance, nor her tightly swathed throat, nor the very noticeable bruise upon her temple.
Arline had not asked a single question. Now, however, she spent some time fixing a tray with the daintiest food she knew and could procure, and took it upstairs with a certain diffidence in her manner and a rare tenderness in her faded, worldly-wise eyes.
“You got to eat, you know,” she reminded Val gently. “You're bucking up ag'inst the hardest part of the trail, and grub's a necessity. Take it like you would medicine—unless your throat's too sore. I see you got it all tied up.”
Val raised her hands in a swift alarm and clasped her throat as if she feared Arline would remove the bandages.
“Oh, it's not sore—that is, it is sore—I mean not very much,” she stammered betrayingly.