At home she told Nan all about her troubles, first exacting a solemn pledge of secrecy. “Hateful thing!” said Nan promptly. “Drop her. Don’t think about her another minute.”
“Then you don’t think I was to blame?” asked Betty anxiously.
“To blame? No, certainly not. To be sure,” Nan added truthfully, “you were a little tactless. You knew she didn’t know that you were in the secret of her having to resign, and you didn’t intend to tell her, so it would have been better for you to let some one else help Miss Eastman out.”
“But I thought I was helping Eleanor out.”
“In a way you were. But you see it wouldn’t seem so to her. It would look as though you disapproved of her appointment.”
“But Nan, she knows now that I knew.”
“Then I suppose she concludes that you took advantage of knowing. You say that it made you quite prominent for a while. You see, dear, when a person isn’t quite on the square herself—”
But Betty had burst into a storm of tears. “I am to blame,” she sobbed. “I am to blame! I knew it, only I couldn’t quite see how. Oh, what shall I do? What shall I do?”
“Don’t cry, dear,” said Nan in distress, at the unprecedented sight of Betty in tears. “I tell you, you were not to blame. You were a little unwise perhaps at first, but Miss Watson has refused your apologies and explanations and only laughs at you when you try to talk to her about it. I should drop her at once and forever; but, if you are bound to bring her around, the only way I can think of is to look out for some chance to serve her and so prove your real friendship–though what sort of friend she can be I can’t imagine.”
“Nan, she’s just like the girl in the rhyme,” said Betty seriously.