Nan looked the picture of dismay. "Wait a minute!—I'll go see!" she whispered earnestly, and tip-toed noiselessly into the hall. A second later she returned, radiant with reassurance.
"Her door is tight shut, and she's making so much noise inside her room she couldn't possibly have heard. Sounds as if she was dragging trunks around or something."
"Perhaps she's packing to go 'way," suggested Delia, with a grain of malice.
Nan fairly jumped with—well, if it wasn't joy it was something equally as moving in its way. "Oh, no, no!" she cried, in a sudden fever of excitement. "I don't want her to leave—like that. Just think how awful it would be to have her leave—like that! Can't you go to her and say I'm—you're good friends with her. Delia, won't you please go and tell her I didn't really mean to say off that speech at her. I learned it before she came, and I meant to recite it, but when I found that she was different—so little and kind of—different, I thought it would be mean to do it, and I gave it up. Do go and tell her, Delia, please, and oh, won't you hurry?"
"Now see here, Nan," interposed the woman. "Our best plan is to wait and see what she is going to do. If she hasn't heard, it's all right, and telling her would only put the fat in the fire. On the other hand, if she has heard and is packing up to go 'way, why, it wouldn't do much good, I'm afraid, to try to stop her. With all being such a lady and so gentle in her ways, she's got a mind of her own—I can see that—and you won't be like to get her to change it. But she'll tell you good-bye before she leaves, she's too much of a lady not to, no matter how she feels, and then you can say your say, and I promise you faithful I'll back you up."
Nan saw the wisdom of Delia's counsel, and tried to content herself to wait. But the suspense of every minute was awful, and she felt herself growing frenzied under the strain. After a time the commotion in the next room ceased, and all was quiet as the grave. "She's getting on her hat now," gasped Nan. "She'll go away and think I'm a heathen and all sorts of horrid things. And she hasn't got any friends or folks of her own, and no house to go to but this. And I s'pose she's awfully poor, because she wouldn't be a governess if she wasn't, and oh, dear! I don't want to have any one be a beggar, and turned out of the only roof they've got over their heads on my account. That's what makes me feel so bad, Delia. That's the only thing. If she will go on her own account I'll—I'll be glad, but—oh, she mustn't go this way!"
Delia turned away her face to hide a smile.
"There's nothing to do but wait," she insisted. "If I go in there and tell her, and she hasn't heard, why it would only give you away; don't you see?"
Nan let herself down in her rocking-chair with a dismal drop. "O dear!" she cried, "I never saw anything like it! The way things go wrong in this house! It's just perfectly horrid! I wish I was with my father, I do so! I guess it's nicer in India than it is here, anyway; and I'm sick and tired of living cooped up in this old stuffy place. So there!"
Delia dusted some imaginary dust off the table with the corner of her apron, and went down stairs to finish up her work.