"You always say I am surprising," she said, "but you never thought I should be quite so surprising did you? Don't you think, dear Angel, that you ought to take a little ignatia? I am really worse than the bull. I see it in your face."
Miss Gregson ignored the remark about her medicine.
"You certainly take my breath away," she said as she lifted the nut crackers again.
"I knew I should," said the girl gleefully. "I am full of plans. I shall treat her just like a sister. She shall have everything that I have, and in the first place she shall have some of my nice dresses to wear. Oh, how I shall enjoy dressing her up! Think of her hair! How magnificent it will look. And though her skin is of course very much tanned I don't know that she will look any the less pretty for that. Besides it will soon improve. You know the doctor told me distinctly that I have saved her from death. That very fact binds us together with a wonderful link. I'm quite sure I shall love her."
Miss Gregson leaned back in her chair and contemplated the girl's eager face. She could not but admire the generous feeling that had prompted the strange resolution on Sheila's part, but for all that she pitied the poor girl who was to be the recipient of her charity. Knowing Sheila as she did, she did not for a moment suppose that her enthusiasm would last.
The day would surely come when she would turn to her old friend, as she had lately done, and ask her to get her out of the difficulty. The auburn hair and long eyelashes would not charm for ever.
And what was more, the poor girl, who had lived for years without a single advantage, would soon show a want of refinement, and give way to little habits of speech or roughness of voice, which, though they might amuse Sheila for a time would assuredly offend her good taste before long. Miss Gregson felt that for the sake of the poor pretty girl who lay upstairs in the blue room, she must at least raise her voice in remonstrance for once.
"My dear," she said, "I am afraid you are making a fatal mistake. Is it unalterable?"
"Mistake! Fatal!" exclaimed Sheila, turning her surprised eyes on her companion. "What can you mean? Surely if I like to adopt a girl I may do so. And by the bye she is not nearly as old as I am. I thought she was nineteen, I find she is only sixteen. I am so glad, as of course it will make it easier for me to train her. Why, don't you see, that it will be simply lovely to have a sister? I have longed for one."
"But you cannot expect a girl who has been on the tramp all her life to be fit company for one who has been born and bred in the lap of luxury."