Ellen stopped a moment and seemed to be thinking deeply.
“I don’t see why you can’t let me stay here for a while with you and your sister without paying me. I have accepted Mrs. Burton’s hospitality when I didn’t even know her. I thought I might be useful in case any of the Camp Fire girls were ill, but they keep perfectly well. I think I am tired being idle, and I have money enough to pay my share of expenses with you. They cannot be much.”
Ellen was tactless.
Robert Clark was a Southerner and shrank from a discussion of money matters at all times. Ellen’s speech had touched him where his nerves were raw.
“Thank you, very much, but your suggestion is entirely out of the question,” he answered coldly. He had a sensitive, well-bred face, made more so by illness. Now his manner showed a hauteur of which he was wholly unconscious.
Ellen felt strangely ill at ease. She had a sensation of shrinking, of shriveling up, inside her. Then, to her intense anger, her eyes filled with tears. She hated herself for having hurt her companion and she hated him for having hurt her. But, most of all, she was horribly ashamed of her own tactlessness—her fashion of making people dislike her when she had intended being kind.
“I am sorry,” she said a little huskily in spite of her efforts to speak calmly, “I did not mean to force myself upon you and your sister. Of course you will be happier alone, and I am sure you will soon be stronger.”
What the young man would have answered could not be known, for just then Marta came out of her tent. She still limped a little but was not using a crutch.
Her eccentric, somewhat irregular face was radiant, and she was wearing her same best grey-green dress.
“When do you think the Camp Fire party will come for me, Miss Deal? You are an angel to stay here and let me go on this expedition with them. I am so happy I would like to dance with one leg, even if the other is slightly out of commission. But what is the matter, Rob; why are you looking so grouchy?”