"I didn't forget; and we were not separated for several years. I went to the high school with Nannie; it was really I who went, for my entreaties overcame my mother's aversion to the clamorous life of a public school. We were so happy; and when I had the trouble with my eyes, Nannie used to read my lessons to me. She learned a whole different course so she could help me. You see, she was awfully clever. The more I knew of other girls, the finer Nannie seemed to me. The—the difference between the classes, the real thing which keeps them apart, is their lack of a common ground of experience. They haven't anything to talk about. I should have been as shy with another girl who worked for her living as she would have been with me, but I knew Nannie so well—I never knew any other woman friend so well, and only one man."
"Whom you married?" said the Southerner with an apologetic accent.
"Yes, poor dear," laughed Mrs. Curtis. "It wasn't treating him well, perhaps, but he brought it on himself."
"Did you go through the high school with your friend?" Mrs. Waite's deep voice was heard again. "But no, surely you weren't a graduate?"
"No; we went to Europe in my second year. I cried myself ill when we parted. My only comfort was that Nannie and I had promised each other that we would go to college together. Nannie was already earning money by her carving. Still—it was bitter. Youth can suffer so easily and so horribly!"
"Yet," said Mrs. Clymer, "though I admit you were a woeful object, Connie, I thought at the time, and I think now, that Nannie suffered the most. She didn't shed a tear that morning when she came up to your house to say good-by; and I went with you to the depot; but there was a look in her eyes which haunted me. And when she stood in the driveway as we rolled away, watching the carriage, and you turned and she waved her hand and smiled—I felt as if I had seen a surgical operation."
"And then? Oh, Mrs. Curtis, that wasn't the end of it?" cried the youngest member.
"Oh, no. I missed Nannie amid all the change and excitement; and I wrote her often. At first she wrote me as often. Now I can appreciate how hard she must have tried to collect the little items of news likely to interest me. And they were all about girls whom she barely knew, and things remote from her. Somehow she found out about everything. It was she who first wrote about when Annie Baylor had scarlet fever, and she who told first of that astounding happening, Mary Taine Willis' engagement. Mary was only three years older than we; it was almost like one of us being engaged. And her reports about the house and the grounds and the horses, my father said, were clearer and more useful than those of the man in charge. But somehow during the last year the letters grew a little less open-hearted and affectionate; a queer film of constraint froze over them, if I may call it that. And on my part I was conscious of a mingling of dread in my delight at the prospect of seeing Nannie when we had come. I knew she would be the same faithful, dear girl whom I should always love; but my Nannie was more—she was the leader, she had charm; I admired her so tremendously, I wondered should I admire her in the same way. Maybe you think that was horrid of me?"
"I don't know"—the Southern woman spoke before the others—"I know it was natural. Well, did you find it different? Had she changed?"
"I don't remember; I only remember that, in the first half-hour, my only fear was lest she should be disappointed in me. I admired everything about her; her very clothes were so dainty; and I had expected to be superior there, I fancy. But it wasn't that; it was my feeling that she was finer and stronger than my other friends. You know the pretty clothes, the pretty manners, are only signs of the real thing; and Nannie had the real thing, I was sure. But there was always that constraint about her. You would not believe," said Mrs. Curtis gently to the Southerner, "you would not believe how absurdly this intangible reserve of hers hurt me."