“It’s quite gorgeous, with chiffon fliers, like wings when you walk. I’m sure none of your friends could have anything more elaborate—”
“That’s just it, Rosa,” interrupted Nancy, “I couldn’t wear things as elaborate as yours. They would look just as if you had given them to me.”
“Oh, of course, if you feel that way about it; all right,” replied the cousin a little stiffly. And that ended the discussion upon capes.
Somehow the joy that came in the box had exploded like a toy balloon, but Nancy tried to make herself think of the importance of Rosa’s changed attitude toward Betty.
“If the cape does that,” she prompted herself, “surely I can give it up.”
Still, she could not forget how much she would have loved to own it. And it really was hers.
Hours passed bringing a keen sense of loneliness to Nancy. She wasn’t having much fun—this sort of life, although it included so much that she could not have had at home, also lacked much that she would have had.
Romping about freely with her girl friends in the little summer colonies, doing unusual things, some of which had turned out wonderfully important for mere girls to accomplish, and, above all, that surrounding of loved ones—these were the things and conditions that Nancy missed.
Not that she didn’t love Rosa, for she really did, but because Rosa was so very hard to understand, and was apt to do almost anything reckless, foolish and even risky.
Pitying herself a little, Nancy gave in to her homesickness. She refused to go over to Durand’s with Rosa after dinner, she refused to take a walk with the suspecting Margot, who must have understood the signs she could not have helped noticing about Nancy, she even refused to listen to the radio, and decided to go to her own room—and read.