“You little wretch!” said Augusta. “If you ever dare—dare to breathe what I in a moment of kindness helped you to do, won’t you catch it from me? You do not know what I can be when I am really your enemy. Your own position, too; what are you in this house? A nobody. There! I will say no more.”
Augusta ran out of the room. Nan stood white and trembling. She clasped her hands together; her eyes, brimful of tears, were fixed on the window.
“How am I to bear it?” she thought. “Just when I was beginning to be so happy! Why am I so awfully miserable? I wonder what it means. I do think that I really quite hate Augusta.”
Just then Kitty’s gay voice was heard.
“Come, Nancy; our captain will arrive in a minute or two, and he will want all the soldiers to be waiting for him.”
Kitty’s laughing face, wreathed in smiles, was poked round the door. Nan made an effort to cheer up.
“How white you look!” said Kitty. “Is anything worrying you?”
“Oh no; nothing really.”
“I thought you would be so glad about this! You do not know what heavenly plans Uncle Peter is always making up. I will tell you about some of his funny plans when we were children another time; but of course there is nothing like this, and it was my thought to begin. You will see how splendidly he will draw up his rules, and how easy and yet how difficult it will be to obey them. He has a sort of way of searching through you, and dragging the best out of you, and crushing down the bad in you. Oh, he is a darling! He is like no one else in the world.”
“I think so too,” said Nan.