"You're so good to me it makes me—ashamed. You're always giving me things. It isn't right. You give away everything you have."
Miss Blake lifted her chin and laughed gayly over the cleft in it.
"No, I don't," she returned, tip-toeing to drop the gloves, like a blessing, on the girl's head. "I have one or two things which I keep all for myself. But if I like to give presents, do you know what it's a sign of? It's a sign I'm poor. Poor people are always possessed by a passion for giving presents. It's true! I've always noticed it! Good-night!"
And that was the last Nan heard about the affair from Miss Blake. Unfortunately—or fortunately—it was not the last she heard of it from others, by any means. It was a long, long time before it was allowed to drop.
In the first place, Michael was discharged from the stables, and this led to a vast amount of discussion, for the poor fellow, who was temperate by nature, was thrown out of employment in midwinter, and his predicament seemed a pitiable one to those who really understood the facts in the case.
Miss Blake, when she heard of the affair, had bidden John Gardiner bring the man to her. She heard his story, and then sent him off with a few kindly, encouraging words, and the poor fellow felt comforted in spite of the facts that she had given him neither money nor any definite promise of help. When he had gone she sat for some time thinking busily, her chin in her palms and her elbows propped on the desk in front of her. She was still for so long that John and Nan stole off after a while and tried experiments with the kodak on some back-yard views, and when they came back to Miss Blake's room to ask her opinion on some point of focus they found the place deserted and the governess gone.
The next day Mike was discovered sitting smilingly enthroned in his accustomed place on the lofty box of the livery "broom-carriage," and he vouchsafed the information to congratulating friends that: "Ut's another chanct Oi hav, though how Oi come boy ut ye'll niver know anny moar than Oi do mesilf, for Misther Allen was that set agin me he wuddn't hear a wurrud Oi'd sa'. But Oi have another chanct and ut's mesilf 'll see till ut, ut lasts me me loife-toime."
"O dear!" complained Ruth to Nan, "I never want to hear the name of sleigh-ride again so long as I live. Everywhere I go, they say so significantly: 'We hear you had a very gay time the other night! Well, well! such things wouldn't have been tolerated when I was young!' and then they make some cutting remark about Mrs. Cole, and I'm afraid it's not going to be very pleasant for her after this, for none of our fathers and mothers want to have anything more to do with her. They say her example has been so bad. And one can't have a bit of fun nowadays, for we're all being kept on short rations to pay up for the other night."
But as the weeks passed the gossip died away and then every one breathed freer again.
Latterly Nan was filling her part of the household contract with considerably less ill-will than she had shown at the beginning, but even now there were occasional lamentations when the day was especially enticing, and her spirits rose and soared above the pettiness of bed-making and the degradation of dusting. It took her about twice as long to get through with her share of the work as it took Miss Blake, and she could never console herself with the thought that it was because the governess shirked. Occasionally she let her own tasks go "with a lick and a promise," as Delia described it, bat when she saw the thoroughness with which Miss Blake did even the least important thing she had the grace to be ashamed and to determine on a better course in the future. But before she really settled down to a stricter habit of conscientiousness something happened that gave her more of an impulse than a course of lectures would have done.