“It would be awful to have Juggins!” she said, after a pause, “she would be worse than Brenda.”
“She would be honest, though,” said Josephine.
“Oh, yes—that she would. But think of our fun and—and—we know enough about Brenda now to force her to give us a good time.”
“I think, girls, we had best accept the situation,” was Fanchon’s final judgment.
Whatever the other girls might have remarked, and whatever their resolve would have been, must be left partly to conjecture. But something occurred at that moment to cause them to come altogether to Fanchon’s point of view; for, just at that instant, there was a tap at Nina’s door, and who should walk in but—Miss Jemima Juggins herself!
She came close up to Nina’s bedside, and asked abruptly where the Reverend Josiah was.
“Why are you lying in bed, you lazy child?” she said. “What is the matter?”
Now certainly Miss Juggins made a great contrast to pretty Brenda, and, when she removed her blue glasses and fixed her rather crooked eyes on Nina, Nina made up her mind on the spot to believe in Brenda, in Marshlands, in the pretty clothes which were yet to be bought, in a good time by the sea.
“I will go and find papa,” said Fanchon. “I know he’ll be glad to see you, Miss Juggins.”
“I hope he will, indeed,” said Miss Juggins. “I have come to speak to him on business. I want a new situation. How untidy your room is, girls! Shameful, I call it—three great hulking lasses like you not to be able to keep your own bedroom straight! But get your father at once, please, Fanny.”