"Very likely!" she added as she adjusted the stitches, some of which had slipped off, owing to my having sat down on it when I first came in.
"Yes," I continued, in a kind of quick, fluttering voice—I could hear so much myself—"she comes from London, but she does not put on any airs. And she does not like me at all!"
"Ah," said Elsie, "and pray how did you find that out?"
So I told her all about Harriet running away because I was so stupid, and her meeting with Mad Jeremy. I said as little about my going at him with an open knife as I could. For, after all, that was a foolish thing to do. But I told Elsie about Harriet Caw fainting, and as much as I could remember about Harriet running home and slamming herself in her room.
And all the time the atmosphere in that room was getting more and more chilly, while Elsie herself would have frozen a whole shipful of beef and mutton right through the tropics.
"Well," I said when I had finished my tale, "she may have got a temper, but she is a nice girl and you will like her. We shall go and see her to-morrow—I told her about you, Elsie."
She flashed a look at me—like striking a vesta at night, it was.
"And pray, what did you tell her about me?"
"I told her that you were pretty—so did Mad Jeremy. And I told her, besides, that you would be sure to take to one another. Now, will you go and see her to-morrow?"
Slowly Elsie gathered up all that belonged to her in Nance Edgar's little sitting-room—her books, her work, and a hat that had been thrown carelessly on a chair.