"Why, if you wish to go back to Shiloh, I'm sure Miss Julia would let you; you have only to tell her and she would let you off."
Then Angelina would shake her head. "Ah! you have no idea how important I am. Why, I know they couldn't get along without me, and I'm sure that if I should leave, everything would stop. I'm surprised that you should suggest it, John."
"But you talked of running away."
"Well, so I might, if Concetta keeps on acting in that forward way, as if she were the most important person here. No, I won't desert Miss Julia, even if Miss Brenda does show so much partiality. I suppose it's my Spanish blood that makes me take it so hard."
John looked at Angelina bewildered.
"Spanish blood! why, we're not Spanish; I hadn't heard of it."
"There, John, you haven't a bit of romance; I should think that you could tell that we're Spanish just by looking in the glass, and I'm sure Spain and Portugal are very near together, and though mother says she was born a Portuguese she may be Spanish. A great many people are beginning to sympathize with me on account of the war."
There! the secret was out. The war with Spain had now come to the foreground, and Angelina wished in some way to be a part of it and of the general excitement. Had John been old enough to enlist she might have worked off some of her energy in urging him to do so. As it was, she amused those who had known her the longest by talking about her fears for her own safety; for although Manila Bay was an American victory, "of course," she would say, "every one has a prejudice against persons of Spanish blood," and Angelina would raise her handkerchief to her eyes, as if she were an exiled princess of Castile.
John only laughed at Angelina when she talked in this way to him, and wished that he could enlist and go toward the South, where the troops were gathering for the war.
"I should like to be a nurse," she then said, "for really this work here with these younger girls is very tiresome, and I don't think that Miss South and Miss Julia properly appreciate me."