“What did Dick say to that?” Nancy could not forbear asking.
“He said she was very kind, and maybe the time might come when he would think seriously of her offer.”
There was a feeling in Nancy’s breast as if her heart had suddenly got up and sat down again. Betty bore no remotest resemblance to the pale kind girl, practically devoid of feminine allure, that Nancy had visualized as the mate for Dick, and frequently exhorted him to go in search of.
“Miss Betty was only making a joke,” she told Sheila sharply.
“We were all making jokes, Miss Dear,” Sheila explained.
“I have never loved any one in the world quite so much as I love you, Sheila,” Nancy cried in sudden passion as the little girl turned her face up to be kissed, as she always did when the conversation puzzled her.
“I like being loved,” Sheila said, sighing happily. “My father loves me,—when he is not painting or eating. He is very good to me, I think.”
“Your father is a very wise man, Sheila,” Nancy said, “he understands beautiful things that other people don’t know anything about. He looks at a flower and knows all about it, and—and what it needs to make it flourish. He looks at people that way, too.”
“But he doesn’t always have time to get the flower what it wants,” Sheila said; “my jessamine died in Paris because he forgot to water them.”