Chapter V: Getting Acquainted

Nan, in spite of the fact that she assured herself her heart was broken, fell asleep as soon as her head touched the pillow. She slept heavily customarily but to-night her rest was fitful and troubled. She kept dreaming strange dreams that caused her to twitch in her sleep and give queer little cries of distress and moans of fretfulness. Sometimes she seemed to be trying to overtake something that was constantly eluding her. First it was a long, lank creature with piercing eyes and a knob at the back of its head which it seemed to be Nan's duty, not to say pleasure, to shoot off with a paper of needles. Then it was something she must recollect or be put to death for forgetting; some awful harangue that she had been doomed to deliver before Delia and a vast crowd of other people, all of whom were staring at her regretfully and murmuring to one another that it was a shame such a hoyden should be allowed to live; and again it was some dainty little creature with tender eyes and shining hair that Nan longed to follow but could not because of something inside her breast that held her back and would not let her call.

Miss Blake did not go to her room until very late. She and Delia kept up a steady stream of conversation until long after midnight, and even then the governess would not have paused if Delia had not been struck with sudden compunction.

"Dear heart alive!" she cried, scrambling to her feet hastily as the clock chimed twelve. "Here you've been wore out with tiredness and excitement and I keep you up till all hours pressin' you with questions that you ain't fit to answer, just as if we wouldn't have time an' to spare together for the rest of our lives, please Heaven! Now go to bed, dearie, so you'll be all rested and fresh in the morning."

Miss Blake shook her head. "No, not all the rest of our lives together, Delia," she cried, hurriedly; "it can only be for a year at most. You said it would be a year, didn't you? Well, then, you know I could not stay after that."

"Go to bed, dearie," was Delia's sole response. "And may you sleep easy and have no dreams."

She took her upstairs herself, just as if the governess had been a little girl; and was not satisfied until she had brushed out the masses of shining hair and woven them into a long, ruddy braid behind. Then she smoothed the pillow lovingly and with another hearty "sleep well" went down stairs to "do up" her dishes and get the house closed for the night.

When she finally stole up to her own room through the pitchy halls she was glad to see that there was no light in the governess' room and that all was darkness and silence within.

"Good! She's asleep by this time, the dear!" murmured the faithful soul, and was soon snoring peacefully herself, quite worn out with the excitement of the evening.

But Miss Blake was not asleep. Her eyes stared widely into the darkness and her brain was spinning with all sorts of teasing thoughts. She listened to the ticking of her watch beneath her pillow--to the muffled chime of the tall clock in the room below--to the gentle rattle of plaster inside the walls where some hidden mouse was scuttling in search of a stolen supper, and tried to soothe herself into a doze but failed and tried and failed again.

Suddenly she sat bolt upright in bed. The sound she heard now was a new one, and one that caused her flesh to tingle. It was the sound of a stealthy hand upon her door. The knob turned noiselessly, the hinges gave a faint whine, and there on the threshold stood a white-robed figure, ghastly and spectral in the pallid light that fell upon it from the cloud-freed moon outside. Miss Blake did not utter a sound and the apparition glided forward with slow, measured steps until it stood beside her bed. Its eyes were staring and wide and fixed.

"It's Nan!" thought Miss Blake, not daring to speak aloud.

The apparition did not remove its gaze. Presently it sighed. Then it raised its head and spoke and its voice was weirdly low and mournful.

"Alas, alas!" it wailed. "This is the worst thing that ever happened to me in all my life. My dear old home! To think that anybody who isn't wanted should come and push herself like this into my dear old home! What does she know of the way I feel? I can never tell her how I hate to have her here, for that would be unladylike. But oh, how I hate it! No, I must keep my lips closed and bear her persecution in silence."

Two white hands were raised and wrung in a way that was truly tragic.

"O father, father!" groaned the ghost, making wild grabs at its hair, "come home from Bombay and save me from this awful woman. Turn her out of the house. Make her go back where she came from. Her hated form haunts me in my sleep and I dream all night of her as I see her in the daytime."

Miss Blake caught her breath in a struggling gasp of dread as to what would come next.

"Tall and thin and lanky, with hair all dragged into that ugly little hard knob at the back of her head!"

The ghost paused, and its uneasy hands clasped each other convulsively while it showed plainly that it was confused in its mind and struggling to grasp a thought it could not express.

Miss Blake breathed a deep sigh of relief. She had really begun to suspect that it was a vision of herself that was haunting Nan in her nightmare. Of course now she knew better. For surely she was not "tall and lanky," and her hair was certainly not "dragged into an ugly little knob at the back of her head." How grateful she was it had not proved to be herself.

"O father! her eyes are like needles."

Miss Blake could have shouted for joy. But who could this awful bugbear be?

"They prick me when she looks! Save me! Save me! my heart will break if some one doesn't come and rescue me from this terrible person. Take her away! She's coming at me with her needly eyes! Daddy! Daddy!"

The uneasy spirit rocked backward and forward in the intensity of its emotion. It stretched out its arms and wagged a threatening forefinger, while it mumbled some unintelligible warning in a voice that faltered and wavered, and then frayed off to a mere wheeze that sounded suspiciously like a snore.

Miss Blake would have risen if she had dared, but she dreaded the effect even the slightest shock might have upon Nan, in what she never doubted was a somnambulistic trance. But when the white-robed figure turned slowly about and retraced its steps to the threshold, she started up and noiselessly followed after to make sure that the girl arrived safely in her own bed and showed no sign of further wandering that night.

Never was a passage from room to room made more deliberately, and when the bed was reached the phantom scrambled into it, dragged the blankets closely about her shoulders and with a sigh of satisfaction settled herself to slumber.

The governess crept back to her own room, thoroughly chilled and shivering with nervousness. It was an hour or more before she felt herself growing drowsy, but at last she dropped asleep and slept heavily until long past the usual rising hour.

Nan waked at her accustomed time, feeling tired and irritable. She found Delia in the kitchen, preparing a tempting breakfast with more than her habitual care.

"Huh!" grunted the girl. "We have hot muffins every morning, don't we? And griddle-cakes! and eggs, and scallops, and fried potatoes, too! Oh, no! we're not making any fuss for the governess. Oh, no! none at all! If I were you I'd be ashamed of myself, Delia Connor!"

Delia pursed her lips together and made no retort.

It did not improve Nan's temper to have to wait for her breakfast until Miss Blake should appear. But Delia made no attempt to serve her, and she was too proud to ask. Happily the delay was not too serious, and the governess appeared at the dining-room door just in time to prevent the muffins from falling and Nan's temper from rising.

"Good morning!" said the cheery voice.

"--morning!" snapped Nan.

"I overslept," continued the governess apologetically; "and I am thoroughly ashamed of myself. I beg your pardon. But I was very tired. I did not sleep over-well the first part of the night."

"You're not late--or--or anything," said Nan. "I never get up till I feel like it."

Miss Blake made no comment.

"And how did you sleep?" she asked after a moment, her eyes laughing mischievously as though in spite of her, while her face remained quite sober.

"All right," responded Nan, uncommunicatively.

"No dreams?"

The girl shook her head non-committally.

"Now, I wonder whether I could tell you your dream," ventured the governess, the light fading a little in her eyes.

Nan did not encourage her to try.

"You were being pursued by some awful creature--oh, quite a gorgon, I should say!"

The girl lifted her head.

"This relentless creature was deaf to all your appeals, though you appealed to her touchingly, something after this style: Alas, Alas! this is the worst thing that ever happened to me in all my--"

"Stop!" cried Nan, suddenly, with blazing eyes, "I didn't! I didn't! Delia listened. She told on me. You're making fun of me, and you're both of you just as mean as you can be, so there!"

She started up from her chair, which she thrust behind her so roughly that it fell to the ground with a bang, and rushed toward the door in a fury of anger and mortification.

Miss Blake sprang from her place and tried to detain her, crying:

"Nan, Nan! What do you mean? I was only in sport! Come back, dear, and let me tell you all about it." But the girl fled past her, flinging her hand passionately away and spurning her attempt at explanation. A moment later the street door flung to with a loud slam.

The quick tears sprang to the governess' eyes, but she crushed them back.

"Don't mind her, dearie," said Delia, consolingly, but with an effort and a sigh. "She ain't always like this. She's sorter upset just now. She don't mean any harm, and she'll be sorry enough for what she's done come lunchtime. Now, you see."

"But I don't understand," Miss Blake cried. "She said you listened and that you told me, and that we were both making fun of her. She thinks we are in league against her. What can she mean? Why, I was only repeating some nonsense she said in her sleep last night, and I thought she would be amused to hear an account of it. She came into my room and orated in the most tragic fashion. What does she mean by saying you listened and told me?"

Delia shook her head. What she privately thought on the subject she would not have told Miss Blake for worlds.

"If you take my advice," she ventured, "you won't mind what Nan says. She's quick as a flash, but she's got a good, big heart of her own, and it's in the right place, too. Just let her be."

"Let her be?" interrupted Miss Blake, hastily, "not if this is the way she is going to be. That is not what I am here for. I am here to educate her, Delia, and I intend to do it."

Delia could see that she meant what she said. There was a determined expression about her mouth that would have surprised Nan if she had seen it. But at noon, when she returned, the governess' face was as placid as ever. She and Delia were discussing the price of butter in the most intimate fashion possible, and Nan snorted audibly as she heard them agree that it was ruinously high.

Delia had played a poor enough part before, "kow-towing" to the enemy the first thing, but now she had deliberately betrayed her--Nan. Had "gone back on her" in the most flagrant fashion. It was the meanest thing she had ever heard of and she'd pay Delia back, you see if she wouldn't! To listen at key-holes and then go and tell-tale!

"Have you had a pleasant morning?" Miss Blake asked, affably, as Nan entered the room.

She got a grudging affirmative, but nothing daunted she continued: "It is so cold now there ought to be good skating. Perhaps you and I can take a spin some day. Do you skate?"

Again Nan answered "Yes," but this time there was a gleam of interest in her tone.

"When my trunk comes I must show you my skates. I think them particularly fine: altogether too fine for one who skates as indifferently well as I do. I am sure you will prove a much better skater than I am. Somehow I fancy you are very proficient."

"I like to skate, and I guess I can do it pretty well. My father taught me--to do figures and things. I don't know any one who can skate as well as my father!" said Nan, with pardonable pride.

"I used to skate a great deal when I lived in Holland," Miss Blake observed. "There every one is so expert that I used to feel like a great bungler. Seeing others do so beautifully made me feel as though I were particularly awkward, and I really did keep in the background because I was so ashamed of my clumsy performances. Perhaps though, that was only an excuse for my not being able to do better, and one ought not to offer excuses, ought one? Is there any pond near here on which we might skate?"

Nan's eyes gleamed.

"Why, yes," she said. "We could go to the Park, or if you didn't want to go there, there's a sort of a pond they call the 'Steamer,' quite near here. Lots of people skate on it, and it's lovely fun. And there's a place the other side of the Boulevard, where you can coast beautifully. It's a jolly hill. We take our bobs there, and--the boys and me--and--"

"I," suggested Miss Blake, casually--"the boys and I."

Nan blinked her eyes. The correction, however, passed by unresented.

"The folks here think it isn't nice for me to bob, and--and things. They think it's rough!"

"Perhaps," ventured Miss Blake, "that may be because they have seen it done in a rough way, or by rough persons. You know a great deal depends upon how you do a thing."

Again Nan blinked her eyes. She was thinking as she had the night before:

"Pooh! I can manage her," while Miss Blake, quite unconscious of what was going on in her pupil's mind, continued: "I think if the weather holds, we may have some very good sport, you and I. Don't you think so? And now run upstairs and smooth your hair and wash your hands, for Delia will have luncheon ready very shortly, and one must make one's self tidy for meals, you know."

And then a very singular thing occurred. Nan found herself on the stairs in obedience to the governess' command almost before she was aware, and she proceeded to make herself tidy, with no thought of refusal at all.

But at luncheon came the first tug-of-war.

Nan was about to repeat her performance of the morning, namely, to push her chair aside when she had finished eating and unceremoniously leave the table.

"Oh, pardon me!" interposed Miss Blake, quickly. "Please remain at the table! You were excused at breakfast, but I am sure there is no necessity for your running away again. We must pay each other the respect to remain seated until we have both finished eating. You see, I am still drinking my tea, and you must allow me another of Delia's delicious cookies."

It was all said very gently, but Nan recognized beneath all the kind suggestion an unmistakable tone of command.

She thrust her chair back still further.

"I don't want to wait!" she answered, dryly. "I hate sitting at the table after I'm through. You can eat all the cookies you like, only I don't want to wait."

"Ah, but, my dear, I want you to wait," Miss Blake said. "I demand of you no more than I myself am willing to do. We must be courteous to each other, and if you had not finished eating I should most certainly remain until you had. I expect you to do no less for me."

"Well, I can't help it! I don't want to stay and I--I won't!" declared Nan, with a sudden burst of defiance.

"Very well," returned Miss Blake, calmly. "Of course, you are too old to be forced to act in a ladylike manner if you do not desire to do so. But, equally, I am too old to be treated with discourtesy and disrespect. If you are willing to behave in a rude manner and bear the reproach that you will deserve, why, well and good--or, rather, ill and bad! But I cannot sit at table with any but gentle mannered people. Unless you wish to behave as becomes a lady, we must take our meals apart."

There was no smile now on the governess' face. Nan suddenly got the impression that perhaps it would not be quite "as easy as pie" to "manage" Miss Blake. It seemed to the girl that for the first time in her life she had encountered determination outside of her own. It challenged her from every line in the governess' little figure. For a moment she hesitated before it. Then, gathering herself together and summoning her dumb demon, she gave her shoulders a sullen shrug and left the room without a word.

Miss Blake finished her luncheon as though nothing had happened. Then she rose, and, going into the kitchen, said a few words to Delia--words that caused the good woman to blink hard for a second and then exclaimed:

"Yes'm. I will. It hurts me to cross the child, but I s'pose it is best. You have a brave spirit to set yourself against Nan. I wouldn't have the stren'th, let alone the will. But I s'pose you know what you can do."

"Oh, yes, Delia," replied the governess, with conviction. "I know very well what I can do, but I shouldn't know if I did not have you to help me. We're both conspiring for Nan's good, and we have to work together."

The rest of the afternoon Miss Blake spent in unpacking her trunk and in disposing of its contents. Beside the trunk there was a cumbersome case, a hamper, and a large crate such as is used for the shipment of bicycles. Delia gazed at it in wonderment. Did the governess use a wheel? If so, what would Mrs. Newton say? Delia trembled at the thought, and eyed the box with especial interest as it was being carried down stairs and deposited in the basement hall closet.

Nan wandered in about twilight and found the house cheerfully lighted and warm and comfortable. There was a fire in the library grate, and she threw herself into a chair before it and lounged there luxuriously, while above her head the new governess was tripping to and fro, "putting her room to rights," Nan suspected. She wondered about that room. She would have liked to go up there and see if those skates had arrived, but of course she could not do that. The governess must not think she cared to see her when she wasn't forced to. No, indeed!

Later Miss Blake came down stairs, and drawing her chair nearer the lamp, commenced to sew. Presently up came Delia.

"Miss Blake," she said, with an emphasis Nan noticed and did not like, "your dinner is served."

Nan jumped up with an exaggerated yawn. Her hair was rough and disordered, her frock was rumpled and untidy, her hands were obviously soiled. Miss Blake remarked on none of these things. She laid her bit of needle-work upon the table and quietly passed down stairs before Nan.

The table was set for one, and the governess seated herself before the solitary place.

Nan stood at the side of the table in stiff and silent amazement.

"Where's my place, Delia?" she called, ignoring Miss Blake, except for an angry flash of her eyes.

But Miss Blake was not to be ignored.

"I thought you had decided to dine alone," she said. "At least, that was the impression you conveyed to me at luncheon. If you have changed your mind, Delia can easily set your place. Shall she do so?"

The question was simple, but Nan knew what it involved. She was speechless with rage. Her face alternately flushed and paled, while her lips twitched spasmodically.

"I--I--hate you!" she cried at last, with breathless vehemence. "You've no right here. When my father comes he'll send you right away. You see if he don't!"

She flung herself in a paroxysm of anger out of the room.

Miss Blake ate her dinner, it is true, but perhaps it was scarcely strange that her relish of it was not great. Every mouthful seemed to choke her. Delia saw her hand tremble as she raised her tumbler of water to her lips.

"This'll make you sick, dearie, this striving with Nan. She'll never give in! Her will is that strong."

But the governess shook her head.

Nan ate no dinner that night, and the next day she slept late; that is, she remained in bed late. Lying there cross and unhappy, she heard sounds of voices in Miss Blake's room. Occasionally there were other sounds as well; sounds of hammering and the moving of furniture across the floor.

When Nan was "good and ready" she rose and strolled down stairs with an air of nonchalance that was for Miss Blake's benefit, should she chance to see.

She found the dining-room in perfect order and the kitchen deserted. No breakfast, hot and tempting, awaited her as of old. Delia was evidently upstairs, and Nan was too stubborn to call her down. She prowled about the closets and cupboards until she discovered some cold oatmeal, a bit of meat also cold, and a slice of bread. These, with a cup of chilling milk, she gulped down hastily and with a thorough disrelish.

"Ugh!" she exclaimed, "how I hate it--and her!"

It was a cheerless morning. The temperature had risen and a thick rain was falling. There was nothing to do out-of-doors so Nan remained within. It was Friday, and one of Delia's sweeping days. She was shut up in the draughty parlor with a mob-cap on her head "cleaning for dear life," as she expressed it. After a brief experience of the cold and discomfort of open windows and clouds of dust, Nan gave up trying to talk to Delia and wandered out of the parlor as disconsolately as she had wandered into it. By and by she heard Miss Blake's door open and close and saw the governess come forth, leave the house, and walk rapidly down the street. She turned in at the Newton's gate and disappeared behind the vestibule door. Nan had flown to the window to gaze after her.

"Whatever can she want there," wondered the girl.

The question bothered her. She had not been able to get direct news of Ruth's condition because she had not dared inquire again after the way she had been treated, but in a round-about manner she had heard that the child had a fever.

"What fever?" she wondered. "Do people die of fever? If she dies will that be because I left her on the ground while I ran to get that milkman to help carry her home?"

Miss Blake was not gone long, but it was luncheon-time when she returned.

"Ah, good morning!" she said, pleasantly, to Nan, who happened to be in the hall. "I have pleasant news for you. Your little friend Ruth Newton is better, and her mamma says she would be grateful to you and me if we would come in once in a while and help her to amuse the poor child. Will you go with me to-morrow? Mrs. Newton said particularly that she hoped you would."

A curious expression flitted across Nan's face.

"Mrs. Newton hates me," she announced. "She doesn't want me to see Ruth."

Miss Blake drew off her gloves carefully.

"I have explained certain matters to Mrs. Newton, Nan," she said, "and she is quite satisfied that she was partly mistaken in her judgment of you the other day. She says that she is willing to apologize for some of her accusations, and she has written you a little note. Now, come, and we will both go down to luncheon. I see Delia is here to tell us it is served."

"She takes it for granted I'll go," thought Nan, and indeed she went quite willingly, and what was more, remained respectfully seated in her place until Miss Blake gave her permission to depart by rising herself.