"That is untrue. I did not spy on you. I merely put two and two together and guessed the rest. Can you deny it? And do you call it lady-like and honorable? I don't. I call it common and horrid."
Billie's voice in her extreme anger was very stern. She carefully avoided calling Nancy by name. She felt if she spoke the name of her friend, she must cry and not for anything did she want to humble herself just then.
"I tell you I won't explain," ejaculated Nancy. "I've done nothing wrong and I think you are very hard and unjust. It's because you are still a child about some things, Billie. When you are older and have had more experience, you will learn not to be a prig."
Older and more experienced! Now all the saints defend us! Billie laughed bitterly. Both girls were on the point of weeping and perhaps, if their anger had changed to tears at that moment, much bitterness might have been saved them. But they were interrupted by Mr. Campbell, who now appeared, walking at a leisurely gait up the path.
"Well, well, children! Here is devotion indeed," he exclaimed when he espied his daughter and her friend standing stock still in the pouring rain. "So intimate and absorbed in each other's society that you are oblivious to the weather! That's the right kind of friendship. I would not have it any other way. How are you, little daughter?" he asked, kissing Billie and shaking hands with Nancy at the same time. "And how's little daughter's friend?"
Not for worlds would they have disclosed the real truth to Mr. Campbell. Billie drew her arm through her father's and Nancy followed them to the house.
"Do you think the rain will ever let up, Papa?" asked Billie, resting her cheek against her father's shoulder.
Nancy felt suddenly frightfully homesick for her own bluff good-natured parent.
"Well, it once rained forty days and forty nights, you know," said Mr.
Campbell. "And what's happened before may happen again."
Habitual wranglers regard quarrels as mere ripples on the surface and soon forget about them, but the two girls were unaccustomed to such scenes and their feelings were deeply lacerated.