"Yes," I thought to myself bitterly, "no wonder Nelly was dazzled. She may like to be the contrast, to help Miss Fine-Airs show off; but I object to that character, and I shall keep pretty clear of this house while Miss Lill is in it."
I spoke to her politely enough, I suppose; and she answered me, it might have been either shyly or haughtily: I chose in my then mood to think the latter. Decidedly the afternoon was not a success.
Nelly did her best to make it pleasant; but she and I couldn't go poking about into all sorts of odd places, as we did when we were alone, and we did not know what the Boston cousin would like to do; so we put on our company manners and talked, and for an illustration of utter dulness and dreariness commend me to a "talk" between three girls in their early teens, who have nothing of the social ease which comes of experience and culture, and where two of them have nothing in common with the other, as regards daily pursuits and habits of life. Lill talked a little about Burnham's—it was before Loring's day—but we had read no novelists but Scott and Dickens, and we couldn't discuss with her whether it wasn't too bad that Gerald married Isabel and did not marry Margaret.
We might have brightened a little over the supper, but then Mrs. Simmonds, who had been sitting upstairs with Nelly's mother, was present,—a stately dame, in rustling silk and gleaming jewels, who overawed me completely. I was glad to go home; but the little root of bitterness I had carried in my heart had grown, until, for the time, it choked out every thing sweet and good.
While the Boston cousin stayed, I saw little of Nelly. I am telling the truth, and I must confess it was my fault. I know now that Nelly was unchanged; but, of course, she was very much occupied. Whenever I saw her she was so full of Lill's praises that I foolishly thought I was nothing to her any more, and Lill was every thing. If I had chosen to verify her words, instead of chafe at them, I, too, might have enjoyed Lill's grace and beauty, and learned from her a great many things worth knowing. But I took my own course, and if the cup I drank was bitter, it was of my own brewing.
At last, one afternoon, Nelly came over by herself to see me. I was most ungracious in my welcome.
"I don't see how you could tear yourself away from your city company," I said, with that small, hateful sarcasm, which is so often a girl's weapon. "They say self-denial is blest: I hope yours will be."
Perhaps Nelly guessed that my hatefulness had its root in pain; or it may have been that her own heart was too full of something else for her to notice my mood.
"Lill is going to-morrow," she said, gently.