“You are not glad! You tried your very best to be editor yourself, though you knew how disappointed I should be. I thought you were my friend. You are not. You are an enemy, and not even an honest enemy at that! You need not trouble yourself about me any more, for lessons or anything else. I can get on quite well alone!”
Susan shrank, as if from a blow.
“Dreda, you are angry. You don’t understand. It’s no trouble. I love to help you.”
“Much obliged. I don’t care for such help. Please don’t talk to me any more. I am angry. I have a right to be angry!”
Dreda pulled her screen with a jerk, cutting herself off from the corner where Susan performed her toilet. Seated on her bed, Nancy brushed at her long, sleek hair, keeping it spread as a veil before her face. Dreda waited in vain for a glance of sympathy, or understanding, but it never came, even when Susan had crept softly from the room and the constraint of her presence was removed. Nancy finished brushing her hair, and rose to her feet in the lightest, most unperturbed of fashions:
“Got any pins you can spare?”
Nancy was celebrated for the number of pins which she used in her toilet. Things wouldn’t fasten without them, she declared. She was fairly bristling with pins, so that her most ardent adorers moderated their embraces, mindful of the scratches which had been their reward in days of inexperience. Dreda eagerly selected half a dozen of her most cherished fancy-headed pins, and handed them across the bed.
“Of course. As many as you like. I say, Nance, I’m sorry to have made a scene. I could not help it!”
“Oh, don’t apologise. I like a good row now and then. Not for myself—it’s too much trouble—but it’s amusing to listen to other people when they get excited. They give themselves away so delightfully.”