"How stupid I have been! Do forgive me!" she said. "We have been having what the Germans call 'an English conversation,' haven't we? I was thinking so hard I quite forgot you—and myself. Ah, what a pretty supper! But I put you to so much trouble," and she turned on Delia two very grateful eyes, while she jumped to her feet with the lightest possible ease.
Delia beamed down upon her beatifically and gave an extra touch to the dainty tray. Nan from her chair scowled darkly upon the whole performance. Delia had deserted her cause; had gone over bodily to the enemy—that was plain. But she needn't flaunt her defection in Nan's very face. Why, it was positively disgraceful the way Delia fetched and carried for this person already, and looked, all the while, as if she could hardly keep from dancing for very joy at the privilege. Well, this governess needn't think that Nan was the kind to be won over by a few smiles and some flickering dimples. When Nan said a thing she meant it and she stuck to it, too. She wasn't a turn-coat like some folks she knew.
"'Alas, alas! my dear old home—! To think that anybody who isn't wanted should come and push herself like this into my dear old home! Oh, father, her eyes are like—' Good gracious! all that description part would have to be changed!" Nan pulled herself together with a visible jerk. How could she speak of "needly eyes" when those of the governess were so deep and soft and gray that they made you feel like—no, they didn't either; but they weren't needly all the same. No! That whole description part would have to be changed. Bother! Well, if it came to that she guessed she could do it! "Her hated form haunts me in my sleep, and I dream of her all night as I see her in the daytime—little and dear, with her hair all shimmery and soft and her eyes kind of kissing you softly all the time, and—" Goodness! that would never do! Why it would be crazy to call on one's father to rescue one from a person like that. Well, she'd leave out the description altogether, that's what she'd do. She—
"Did you speak?" asked the governess, in her musical voice, turning toward Nan inquiringly, and then the girl suddenly realized that she had been mumbling her thoughts aloud.
"No, I didn't," she responded, with irritation. "It was too bad," she declared to herself it was, "that after all the trouble she had taken to learn the thing by heart, she should be pestered to death by having to make changes in it this way—at the last minute, too. Why wasn't Miss Blake tall and lanky and needly-eyed and a fright, she'd like to know? It was just like her, though! So contrary! To change about and upset all Nan's plans. Well, as long as there was so much fuss about the thing, she s'posed she'd give it up."
"She's so little, it'll be easy enough to manage her. I guess it isn't worth while. I can just say, to-morrow or next day, 'Miss Blake, I've come to the conclusion you don't suit,' and she'll go right off. She may cry a little, but I won't mind that; and if she begs to stay, I'll say, 'Now there's no use teasing! When I once say a thing I mean it!' and that will settle her once for all."
Delia was pressing the governess to take more supper when Nan again waked to what was going on about her.
"Why, you don't eat any more than you used—I mean than a bird. Do take a little more chicken, do! And a cup of coffee, nice and hot, that's a good—lady!"
It was really too humiliating! It was more than Nan could bear. She sprang to her feet and without a word—with nothing but a glance of withering scorn at Delia—swept out of the room and upstairs to bed.
Miss Blake looked after her with strange, wondering eyes, but made no attempt to follow her. She just turned to Delia and stretched out her hands.