A few minutes later the girl raised her head.
“There!” she exclaimed. “I guess the storm is over. It’s been gathering for days and I just had to—turn it loose. Now, Janie dear, I’ll be good!” An emphatic little hug gave the anxious Jane further assurance, and when her strong arms, that had so often kept danger from the girl, now wound around the loved form with renewed promise, loyally and affectionately, Jane asked:
“Glory dear, can’t you tell Nanty? What—is wrong?”
Instantly Gloria was on the defensive. She affected to laugh but the sound was false and only made matters worse.
“Why, Nanty Morgan! Are you getting—morbid?” choked Gloria. “Now daddy’s gone! He’ll be out on the big ocean soon and he has wanted that glorious sail so long!” She paused and glared at the picture that stood in its little gold frame on the round table in the bay window. “And when he has made his dream come true, what—could be wrong, Nanty?”
“I know you love your daddy with a double love, Glory darling, but somehow I know you too,” said Jane wisely, “and it seems to me—”
She stopped and straightened the cushion so lately dampened with Gloria’s tears and crushed with her first real heartbreak—“Well, Glory darling, Jane will be watching, even from a distance, and if you don’t get fair play—”
The tone of voice was full of challenge. Instantly Gloria looked alarmed.
“Now, Nanty, you surely wouldn’t go fussing around Aunt Harriet’s,” she said. “You know what a nerve-nest her house is.”
“Yes, I know. Your father and your aunt’s husband were boyhood chums, they married sisters,” Jane said reminiscently. “And they’ve always been great friends since, but your Aunt Harriet is—well, she’s different. She seems to live for that haughty daughter of hers.”