It seems the ankle was not sprained after all. Rosa spent one day trying on all her sick-spell caps, the little gifts she had not yet had a chance to wear, trying on her fancy silk robes—there was that beauty, Betty had brought her from Paris, it was glorious and she had never really worn it before.
Nancy never before had seen such beautiful things, and Rosa insisted that she too try some of them on. It was in this way the cousin tactfully bestowed upon Nancy a lot of pretty things “just presents I should have sent on Christmas and on birthdays,” insisted Rosa.
“But wait until Dad and Betty come,” threatened Rosa. “They’ll want me all put in splints, see if they don’t. Betty seems to think I’ll melt, like gelatine, if I’m left out of the ice-box,” she finished, a little bitterly.
“Now, Rosa,” objected Nancy, “maybe you’re not fair. I can guess that Betty feels like your mother, even if she isn’t, and that would make her worry a lot more about you. Since I’ve been away from my mother I know what a lot of things she has been doing for me, in spite of keeping up her library business. My clothes seem to be all upset already—”
“Give them to Margot, she adores fixing clothes,” interrupted Rosa, losing the point Nancy had tried to make regarding the pretty step-mother. “I honestly do believe she musses my things up just for the joy of straightening them out again.”
“How funny! But I don’t really mean that I can’t look after my things, Rosa,” explained Nancy, “although I did use to think no girl in the world could hate such work more than I did—”
“I don’t mind it a bit,” interrupted Rosa grandly. “I often wash out laces and my fine stockings—”
“Oh,” said Nancy with one of her twisted smiles, “I don’t mind just that, either. But Rosa, hadn’t you better get off that foot? You’ve been standing on it for almost half an hour.”
“Just as you say, Coz,” agreed Rosa, who did seem strangely willing to agree with most of Nancy’s suggestions. “You don’t know what this ankle means to me. I haven’t told you—”
“What?” asked Nancy, bluntly.