So Nina consented, although reluctantly, and a few minutes later they set off together for the railway station. Rose stood on the platform, looking after the train.
“God bless you, darling!” she said, softly to herself.
Poor valiant, gentle Nina, going off to attend to business affairs, to “manage” the elusive and plausible Mr. Doyle.
“But it would have hurt her if I’d said anything,” thought Rose. “And, anyhow, things couldn’t be much worse, financially.”
She walked back to the bungalow, a long walk; but she was in no hurry to reënter the empty house. It was ridiculous to miss Nina so, just for one night; it was weak and sentimental to feel so lonely.
“I might learn a lesson from the Morgans,” she thought, as she went down the beach road. “No one could accuse them of being too sentimental in their family life!”
And suddenly she felt sorry for the Morgans, with their quarrels and their banging doors and their stormy, miserable existence. She thought of them, and she thought of the love between Nina and herself which made any place home, any trial endurable. And she pitied them with all her heart.
There was Margie on the veranda now, sewing—sewing in such a Morgan way! She had a paper pattern spread out on the table, and the wind fluttered it, and Margie pounced down upon it furiously, upsetting her workbasket and getting herself tangled up in the yards and yards of green charmeuse on her lap. Rose watched her for a minute; then she said, moved by a friendly impulse:
“Miss Morgan, won’t you let me help you?”
Margie spun round, upsetting everything again.