“Oh, something—great!” and the baby blue eyes fairly whirled around in Rosa’s face as she turned them up, down, from right to left and then the other way, expressing the wonderment she had so vaguely hinted at.
“Think you might tell me,” teased Nancy. In fact the big secret between Rosa and Orilla was growing more and more mystifying to the visitor.
“I do intend to tell you, of course, Nancy,” confided Rosa, her face falling into the rarely serious lines which this subject could provoke. “But not just—yet.” She drawled these last words intentionally and the refusal to answer her question piqued Nancy. In fact, she dropped Rosa’s prettiest scarf down in a heap without even pretending to fold it.
“Mad?” teased Rosa.
“No, of course not. But Rosa, it is queer, the way you act about that girl.” She just couldn’t say Orilla.
“Nan-cee.” Rosa had both her arms around the pouting cousin. “You’re not jealous! You see—oh, you see I haven’t had any body else; not anybody, and Orilla has been kind to me—”
“Even Gar doesn’t like her,” flung back Nancy.
“No, that’s so. He hates her. But then you see, I’ve been an awful nuisance to Gar on account of it all.”
“How—a nuisance?”
“Nancy Brandon, you’re what my dad calls an idealist!” exclaimed Rosa, bubbling back into her usual jolly mood. “Know what that is? I’ve looked it up for it’s dad’s pet word. It means one who—”