“Oh, here you are, Annette!” he cried. “I’m going to take a little run with Mart and his cousin. And that reminds me—you must meet Janice Day. Come down here, Annette.”
He was evidently unacquainted with Nelson, for Janice saw him look at the school teacher curiously. Annette arose with an amused expression of countenance as though she were tolerating the requests of a small boy. Sisters do hold that attitude at times regarding their brothers.
“I should be charmed,” she said, in her drawling way. “This is my brother, Mr. Haley,” and she introduced the teacher easily. “I had no idea that this—ahem!—young lady whom I have seen in the motor-car was your Janice Day.” She arrived at the foot of the steps now and put out her hand to touch Janice’s gloved one. “Re’lly, I’ve been hearing so much about you from Frankie that I was quite prepared to find you very terrible. He seems to think you a remarkable girl.”
Not a word or a glance, not even a flicker of the rather sparce eyelashes, to show that Annette remembered the meeting on the road to Middletown! Yet Janice was convinced that the city girl had a very vivid remembrance of the occasion—was remembering it as she drawled her long speech, in fact, and that such remembrance pointed her tongue with venom. There was not two years’ difference in their ages; yet Annette did her best to make Janice seem a child.
Nelson bowed rather stiffly from the piazza; he did not come down to the car. Marty waved his hand to him and called out: “Hullo, Mr. Haley!” Janice could only bow and smile. Oh, yes, she could smile! The power of repressing her real feelings and of hiding her hurts under a mantle of pride had come to her in this time of trial.
Frank had shaken hands with Nelson perfunctorily and run on in for his cap. Now he came back and shoved his sister playfully aside as he stepped into the car beside Janice.
“Go away, little girl,” he said to Annette, laughing. “You’ll get run over. We’ll have more time for you some other day. And I want you and Janice to be good friends—you’ll find lots to like about each other.”
Janice bade Annette good-day pleasantly, and immediately started the car. Naturally she was busy making the turn and starting up the hill; but she did not miss Annette’s languid smile and shrug as she returned to Nelson. A sudden rush of tears half blinded the troubled girl. High Street grew misty before her, and Marty yelled:
“Look out! you’ll run down ol’ Miz’ Cummings.”
The warning brought Janice to herself. She braced up, cleared her eyes with a little shake of her head, and began to chat to Frank while running the car with her usual care. But she could not forget Nelson Haley.