“We don’t know until we are away from it,” she reasoned, choking back the wave of home-sickness that threatened to creep over her. “I don’t see why Rosa thinks she is left out of everything; that she is too fat to be happy,” went on Nancy’s deliberation. “Her father just idolizes her.”
A little flutter from the doorway seemed to answer that, for presently the lovely Betty—Lady Betty, as Nancy was privately calling the new aunt, appeared before them.
She was lovely; Nancy conceded that instantly, and surrounding her, like a halo of loveliness, was a faint something which recalled to Nancy the perfection of Miss Manners’ hand-made laces—a combination of inspiration and perfectly chosen materials. No wonder her Uncle Frederic had been fascinated by Betty Burnett. Surely she was lovely.
“Sweet-heart!” she almost sang to Rosalind. “What has happened to you? Don’t tell me—”
“Busted me leg!” sang back Rosa, impishly. “But, Betty dear, there’s Nancy. You are going to love her because she—is skinny!”
The next few moments were lost to Nancy in her confusing introduction. Betty was being kind, kind to the point of gush, Nancy feared, but then Rosa had been absurdly blunt and so had sort of challenged their meeting. The explosion of slang betrayed Rosa’s own feelings. She was insisting that Betty would love a thin girl and intimating broadly that she hated fat ones.
While all this was going on, and especially a little later when Uncle Frederic had arranged his wife’s blue cushions in the big blue bird chair (Betty was, of course, a dainty blonde), Nancy found her eyes devouring the picture.
This was the wonderful, the beautiful Betty who had taken—so Rosa said—Rosa’s place in the tall iron-gray man’s heart. Who had put Orilla out of what she had been brought up to consider her home, and worst of all, if true, it was she who had brought unhappiness to little Rosa, because her own flawless beauty was contrasting so painfully with the ungraceful lines of Rosalind Fernell.
It must be remembered that Nancy Brandon was a girl whose home influence was almost opposite that of Rosa’s. Her mother and brother Ted were dear, darling chums, all and each a part of the other’s existence. Also, that Nancy’s mother was employed in a public library, so that books had become a real part of Nancy’s life. And books are very good friends indeed. They almost always try to make folks more tolerant and more reasonable with their surroundings and companions.
But here was Rosa, a girl who only read books when she had to, or when Margot threatened her with something worse to do. She had had little chance to learn the simple things that stood for so much in Nancy’s life, and while Nancy could not have reasoned this way, it is only fair to understand Rosa and her peculiar self-made troubles.