What was to be done? she could not stand there, gazing about her; and there seemed no place to sit down, and nowhere to go. Where could father be? Why had he not stayed at home to welcome his little girl? or if too busy for that, surely the mother could have stayed, and he must have left a message for her.
If the little girls would only be good and try to tell her what all this strangeness meant! She made another effort to get into their confidence. She bent toward Susie, smiling as brightly as she could, and said: "Didn't you know, little girlie, that I was your sister Nettie? I have come home to play with you and help you have a nice time."
Even while she said it, she felt ten years older than she ever had before, and she wondered if she should ever play anything again; and if it could be possible for people to have nice times who lived in such a house as this. But Susie was in no sense won, and scowled harder than ever, as she said in a suspicious tone: "I ain't got no sister Nettie, only Sate, and Nan."
Hot as the room was, the neat little girl shivered. There was something dreadful to her in the sound of that name. She had forgotten that she ever used to hear it; she remembered her father as having called her 'Nannie'; that would do very well, though it was not so pleasant to her as the 'Nettie' to which she had been answering for seven years.
But how strange and sad it was that these little sisters should have been taught to call her Nan! could there be a more hateful name than that, she wondered. Did it mean that her step-mother hated her, and had taught the children to do so? She swallowed at the lump in her throat. What if she should cry! what would those children say or do, and what would happen next? she must try to explain.
"I am Nannie," she couldn't make her lips say the word Nan. "I have come home to live, and to help you!" She did not feel like saying "play with you," now. "Will you be a good girl, and let me love you?"
How Susie scowled at her then! "No," she said, firmly, "I won't."
There seemed to be no truthful answer to make to this, for in the bottom of her heart, Nannie did not believe that she could. Still, she must make the best of it, and she began slowly to draw off her gloves. Clearly she must do something towards getting herself settled.
"Won't you tell me where father is? or mother?" her voice faltered a little over that word; "maybe you can show me where to put my trunk; do you know which is to be my room?"