“I’m always getting cuts on my hands,” replied Rosa. “All I have to do is to hide the rest of me. Margot is pretty busy now, you know. If she hadn’t been she would have heard old Pixley’s story. Can’t that woman talk though?”
Nancy agreed that she could, and that led to further discussion of Mrs. Pixley, Orilla, Mrs. Rigney and some other folks that Nancy had recently become acquainted with.
This was to have been the evening of the dance at Sunset Hotel, but there was now no possibility of the girls attending it. Not only did Rosa’s battered condition make it impossible, but a heavy summer storm had descended upon the mountains, and showed no indications of subsiding.
Rain, wind, thunder, lightning! The girls watched the great spectacle from a west window, and at times it seemed as if the heavens were splitting asunder. The lightning flashed in a solid sea of fire behind one great mountain, and this looked indeed as if the sky were rent and another world was breaking through.
Somehow the storm seemed a fitting finish for the turbulent day that Nancy and Rosa had just passed through, and as they watched the display in the heavens they worried about Orilla. Was she safely under shelter? Why did not her mother prevent her foolish work? And, Nancy secretly wondered, what had that little flash of light meant which she had seen flame up suddenly and then die out?
For days following this there was no sign of Orilla nor did any word from her come to Fernlode. But this was in no way unusual, rather was it regarded as a good thing for Rosa and Nancy.
Mrs. Rigney came around occasionally, Nancy noticed, and she was surprised to find her a woman of intelligence. She appeared to be on the best of terms with Margot and the other servants at Fernlode, and this seemed to be cause for greater wonderment that Orilla should be so antagonistic.
Rosa recovered quickly, as she had promised to, and she also “reformed.” That is, she no longer kept secret trysts with the “fat-killer,” as she now called Orilla, although Nancy knew that letters, messages, and even bundles addressed to Orilla went out very privately from Rosa’s room.
The arrival of a lovely white scales for Rosa’s bath room came as a surprise one day, but a letter from Lady Betty presently explained it.
Rosa was to take long walks with Nancy, as she had promised to do; she was also to follow some sensible advice in the matter of diet, and just to keep up her courage she was to watch the scales!