The girl was really frightened. She stood with palpitating heart, fearful that he had recognized her. What would he think if he knew that she had come to his sick room after they had been so long estranged?
But Nelson was not conscious. He might have been dreaming of her—the thought afterward thrilled Janice; but he actually knew nothing of her presence. She finished tidying the room and then sat down by the window where a little light came through the blind, and waited.
What would Daddy say if he knew she was doing this? She tried to remember all her father had written regarding her feeling for Nelson Haley and his feeling for her. During those months when circumstances had separated them, Janice had missed his companionship sorely.
Had he missed her? Was he as unhappy as she was regarding the breaking off of their friendship?
Daddy had said that one of the finest inspirations for a young man just starting out in life was the friendship of a young girl. Janice was sure that she had never done anything to harm Nelson; quite the contrary.
But Annette Bowman! Janice distrusted the civil engineer’s sister. Her influence over Nelson could not be good.
Since the barn dance at Judge Slater’s Annette had not been so popular in Polktown. The tongue of gossip wagged industriously about her. It was told that she had been requested to leave the barn dance because of her disgraceful actions. Her name was coupled with “that foreigner,” Bogarti. The very ladies who went to the dancing master for instruction sneered at Annette for having been so familiar with him.
Had Janice been a revengeful girl she could have gloated over Annette’s fall in public estimation. Not that the city girl’s pedestal had been one to envy from the beginning. She had gained no faithful friends, nor any real place in the public estimation. She had catered merely to the thoughtless and frivolous and had influenced only such people as desired to be showy and up-to-date.
Annette was another kind of “do something” person. She had stirred Polktown, it was true; but Janice doubted if the girl had stirred it to any good purpose. Dress, and dancing, and social life played a very small part, after all, in the real progress of the town.
Unfortunately, Nelson Haley had been swept into the current of Annette’s influence. The fact had been publicly commented upon. Janice knew that it was very fortunate for him that he had not chanced to attend her at the barn dance and that her own brother had brought her back to town. Otherwise the tongue of scandal would surely have been busy with his name, too. Why, right now, Janice knew, there were mothers who had forbidden their girls to speak to Annette on the street, or go to houses where she was made welcome.