"Well, and I really thought so. I believe now she'd have said good-bye, if—"
"If I hadn't been such a—brat? Say it right out, Delia! You mean it and you might as well say what you think," broke in the girl bitterly.
Delia turned on her heel and stalked grimly down stairs. A second later she heard a rush of flying feet behind her, and the next moment two arms were locked about her neck.
"Poor old Delia," cried Nan, in one of her sudden bursts of remorse. "I'm the horridest girl that ever lived! I know it as well as you do, and if you weren't the patientest thing in the world you wouldn't stand it for a minute. But don't you go away from me too, Delia! Please don't! Honest Injun, I'll try to behave! Cross my heart I will. And I tell you this much, I feel just awfully about Miss Blake. I shouldn't wonder a bit but it would snow tonight, and she hasn't a place to go and no money, and—O dear! I feel like a person that ought to be in jail!"
Delia extricated herself gently from the clinging arms. "What makes you think Miss Blake's as poverty-stricken as that?" she asked.
"Oh, I don't know," responded the girl. "But I just feel she is. And she is so little too. She looked so glad to get into this house that I guess she never had much of a place to stay before."
"She don't dress like a person that's next-door to a beggar," mused Delia.
"No, she doesn't. She has really pretty things, hasn't she? But I guess they're made over and cast-off, or something. Maybe the lady she lived with last gave them to her?" speculated Nan.
"Maybe she did," said Delia.
The two made their way slowly down to the kitchen. It was beginning to grow dark and the dinner must be prepared.