Meg only stroked the wealth of beautiful hair she had let down to dry; she felt it better not to speak at all.
By-and-by she slipped out of the room and stole down to the kitchen. When she returned, Nellie was a little calmer, and even gave a wet look of interest at the tray she carried. There was a little old saucepan on it, a tin of café-au-lait, two cups, sugar in a saucer, the end of a loaf of bread, and some pineapple jam.
“I couldn’t find the butter,” she said, half apologetically, as she set down her load on the bed edge.
“Oh, I don’t deserve it!” wept Nellie, meaning less the butter than Meg’s kindness.
They had to use the water out of the wash-stand bottle, and in the absence of spoons had to stir their cups with the bone ends of their toothbrushes, but the meal gave them both new life and spirits. Meg toasted the bread on the end of her knife and spread a piece thickly with the toothsome jam. She proffered it to Nell with burnt cheeks and a gay little laugh.
“Oh, Meg, you are the best girl on earth!” the [215] ]girl said, flinging her arms impetuously around her sister’s neck. “I’m not fit to black your boots! there’s nobody just like you, Meg, in all the world. Oh, Meg darling, why can’t you make me more like you?”
Meg only kissed her for answer, kissed her with a sweet, moved look on her face. And then Nellie told everything: how she had dropped from the window on to the tanks and scrambled down from [216] ]there with the help of the creeper, how she had been in time for the brougham they had sent, how utterly miserable she had been all the evening.
She declared their own comparative poverty seemed beautiful against the Brownes’ wealth and glaring vulgarity.