Chapter VIII: Nan's Heroine

The strain Nan had given her ankle proved more serious than either she or Miss Blake had expected. It threatened to keep her chained to the sofa for days to come, and the girl's only comfort lay in the thought that now, of course, the governess would not force the question of study, and after she was up and about again she might be able to dispose of it altogether, and save herself any more worry on that score.

But Monday came, and, true to her word, Miss Blake appeared in the library after breakfast with an armful of school-books, to which she kept Nan fastened until luncheon time. It was perfectly clear that there was no escape. Miss Blake was armed with authority, and the girl knew herself to be under control. She fretted against it so persistently that if the governess had not had an enduring patience she must have despaired over and over again under the strain of Nan's sullen tempers, fierce outbreaks, and lazy moods. There were moments when the girl seemed to be fairly tractable, but there was no knowing when the whim would seize her to fall back into her old ways, so that, at the best of times, Miss Blake did not dare relax her control. Then Nan would kick her heels sulkily, and comfort herself with the thought that when her father came home all this would be put an end to. Miss Blake would go. Hadn't she said so herself? And that would finish up this studying business quick enough. She could cajole her father easily into letting her stay away from school, and then--here she would be, as happy as you please, with only those two, Delia and her dear daddy, to look after her, and no one at all would say no to anything she might choose to do. It was a blissful prospect. In the meantime there were lessons, and--Miss Blake.

But after a few days Nan found that, somehow, the lessons were not so hard after all, and she never would have believed that they could be so interesting. While as for Miss Blake--Well, a woman who sits reading "Treasure Island" and such books to one for hours together can't be regarded entirely in the light of a nuisance.

"I never knew geography was so nice before," Nan admitted one day after lessons were over. "I used to hate it, but now, why it's downright jolly! I never saw such beautiful pictures! Where in the world did you ever get so many?"

"I took them myself!"

Nan's eyes widened. "Why, have you been to all these places?" she asked, not a little awe-struck.

Miss Blake confessed she had.

"And you took all these photographs your own self?" persisted the girl.

The governess laughed. "I'm like George Washington, Nan," she said. "I cannot tell a lie! I did them with my little--Kodak!"

Nan fairly gulped. She would have said "Jiminy!" but she knew Miss Blake disapproved of "Jiminy!" and somehow, she was willing to humor her just now.

"Only," went on the governess, "it isn't a little Kodak at all. It is a very fine camera indeed. Some day, if you like, I will show it to you, and then, perhaps you will be interested enough to care to learn how to take some photographs yourself."

Nan bounced up and down on the sofa with delight. "Oh, won't I, though!" she exclaimed feverishly. "Just won't I!"

"But mind you, my dear," warned Miss Blake. "If you once undertake it, I want you to persist. It is not to be any 'You-press-the-button-and-we-do-the-rest' affair. I want you to learn to finish up your work yourself. Do you think you will care to take so much trouble?"

Nan nodded energetically.

"Very well, then. So it stands. If you are willing to learn I'll gladly teach."

"Who taught you?" asked the girl curiously.

Miss Blake shook her head. "Just a man whom I paid for his trouble," she returned simply. "I wanted to learn, and so I went into a gallery and got some experience, and then came away and experimented on my own account. It has taken me years, and I am still working hard at it, for I believe in never being satisfied with anything less than the best one can do."

Nan blinked. She herself believed in being satisfied with whatever came easiest, unless it was in the way of some sport, where she liked to excel.

"How jolly it must be to travel about--all over the world," said she, musingly. "When I'm grown up I guess I'll be a governess, or a companion, or something, just as you are, and get a place with some awfully nice people who will take me everywhere. Was it nice where you were before you came here? Were there any girls? Why did you leave?"

Miss Blake looked troubled, but Nan was not used to noticing other people's moods, and did not even stop to hear the replies to her own questions. "If you've been all over the world, you'll know where my father is, and can tell me about it. Oh, do, do! Show me some pictures of India, won't you please? Just think, I haven't seen my father for two years, and he won't be home until next autumn--almost a year from now. You ought to see him! He is the best man in the world--only I guess he is lonely, because my mother died when I was a baby, and he hasn't any one to keep house for him but Delia and me. Mr. Turner says he has lost a lot of money lately, too. I guess that's why he went to India. If I had been older he would have taken me. But he had to leave me here with Delia. Delia has been in our family, for, oh, ever so many years. She first came to live here when my mother was a young girl. She says it was the jolliest house you ever saw. My grandfather and grandmother were alive then, and mamma had a young friend, who was an orphan, who lived with them. They loved her just as if she had been their own child, and she and my mother were so fond of each other that--well, Delia says it was beautiful to see them together. And such times! There were parties and all sorts of things all the time till, Delia says, it was a caution. My grandfather wasn't very well off, and lots and lots of times my mother wouldn't have been able to go to the parties she was invited to, if it hadn't been for that friend of hers, who used to give her the most beautiful things--dresses, and gloves, and all she needed. She had loads of money, and every time she got anything for herself she got its mate for my mother. Don't you think that was pretty generous?"

Miss Blake bit her lip. "One can't judge, Nan," she said. "If your mother shared her home with this girl and she had money and your mother had not, I think it was only right that they should share the money too. No, I do not think it was generous."

Nan tossed her head. "Well, I think it was and so does Delia," she retorted hotly.

"It is easy enough to give when one has plenty," pursued the governess, almost sternly. "But when one has little and one gives that--well, then it is hard and then perhaps one may be what the world calls generous, though I should call it merely grateful."

Nan did not understand very clearly. She thought Miss Blake meant to disparage her mother's friend, the woman she had been brought up to think was one of the noblest beings on earth. She felt angry and hurt and almost regretted that she had confided the story to her since she made so little of her heroine's conduct.

"I don't care; I think she was perfectly fine and so does Delia. My mother just loved her and I guess she knew whether she was generous or not. When she went away my mother was wild. She cried her eyes out. But she married my father soon after that, and then--well, my grandmother died and then my grandfather, and I was born and my mother died and--O dear me! it was dreadful. Delia says many and many a time she has gone down on her knees and just prayed that that girl would come back, but she has never come and she won't now, because it is years and years ago and maybe she's dead herself by this time. Do you think Delia would have prayed for Miss Severance to come back if she hadn't been the best and most generous girl in the world?"

Miss Blake smiled faintly. "That settles it, Nan!" she declared. "If Delia wanted her back she must at least have tried to be good. And even trying is something, isn't it? And now, how do you think luncheon would taste?"

Nan was more than ever inclined to be sulky. Her loyalty was touched. Not alone did Miss Blake fail to appreciate her heroine, but she showed quite plainly that she did not want to hear about her. "All the time I was talking she fidgeted around and looked too unhappy for anything. I guess she needn't think she's the only one in the world that can make people love her. I don't think it's very nice to be jealous of a person you never saw. Pooh! I like what she said about trying to be good. I guess Delia knows," said Nan.

They ate their luncheon together in the library, and after they had finished Miss Blake excused herself and went upstairs to prepare to go out.

"After being in the house all the morning one needs a change," she said, "and it would be a sin to spend all of this glorious day indoors."

Nan sighed. How she longed to get away herself. But of course that was impossible, with this old troublesome ankle bothering her. If she could not step across the room, how could she hope to get into the street? O dear! When would it be well?

Miss Blake was tripping about upstairs and Nan could hear her singing as she went. Delia was up there, too. When Delia walked the chandelier shook.

"She follows Miss Blake about so, it's perfectly disgusting," thought the girl resentfully. "Now, I wonder what she wants in my room. I don't thank either of them for going poking about my things when I'm not there, so now! Well, I'm glad she's coming down, at any rate."

The governess appeared in the library a moment later, but Nan could scarcely see her face, she was so overladen with wraps and rugs. She turned the whole assortment into a chair, and before the girl could ask a question, she found herself being bundled up and made ready for the street.

"What are you doing?" she gasped out at length. "You know I can't walk."

"Nobody asked you, sir!" quoted the governess, gayly.

"Then what are you putting on my things for?"

"Ready, Delia?" sang out Miss Blake, cheerfully.

Nan heard the front door open. Then heavy steps came clumping along the hall, and in another moment she was being borne down the outer steps and set comfortably in a carriage by the good old Irish coachman, Mike, from the livery stable round the corner.

"Are you comfortable?" asked Miss Blake, with her foot on the step. "Have you everything you need?"

Nan nodded, and the governess, taking her place beside her, motioned to Michael, who climbed to his seat on the box, and off they drove.

"There is Delia at the window! Let's wave to her!" cried Miss Blake, with one of her happy girl-hearted laughs.

It seemed to Nan that she had never seen the Park look as beautiful as it did to-day. To be sure, most of the trees were bare, but the naked branches stood out delicate and clear against the blue of the violet-clouded sky and by the lake-shore the pollard willows were gray and misty, and a few russet maple trees still held their leaves against the sweeping wind. They saw numberless wheels spinning along the smooth paths, and though the governess said nothing, Nan knew she had given up this chance of a ride for her sake.

Impulsively she put out her hand and laid it on Miss Blake's.

"If it weren't for me you'd be on your wheel now, wouldn't you?" she asked.

"Yes," came the answer, prompt as an echo. "But as it is I'm not on my wheel, and it so happens that I'm doing something that gives me much more pleasure."

"If I had a bike it would make me simply furious to have to give up a ride such a day as this," said Nan.

"Then isn't it rather fortunate you haven't one?" asked Miss Blake, saucily. "But seriously, Nan, why haven't you one?"

Nan set her jaw. "My father can't afford it," she said proudly.

The governess turned her head to look at a faraway hill, and there was an embarrassing little pause. When she faced about again Nan could see that her chin was quivering, and in a spirit of tender thoughtfulness quite new to her, she hastened to change the subject since Miss Blake felt so badly about having asked the question.

"This is the lake where we skate in winter," she said. "That is, most of the girls come here. I go to the Steamer. I like it better."

The governess looked at it and asked, absently, "Why?"

"Oh, because its jollier there. Most of the girls I know--I don't know--that is, they don't know me; they don't like me much, and I'd rather not go where they are. John Gardiner and some other boys and I go to the Steamer and have regular contests, and it's the best sport in the world."

But Miss Blake was not listening. She was thinking of other things, and only came back to a sense of what was going on about her when Nan gave a great sigh to indicate that she was tired of waiting to be entertained. The governess roused herself with a smile and an apology and began at once to chat briskly again.

"Whenever you want Michael to turn you have only to say so," she said. "What do you think of going down-town and buying some jelly or something for little Ruth Newton. We could stop there on our way home, and you could send it up with your love."

Nan nodded heartily. It always pleased her to give. She enjoyed, too, the thought of getting a glimpse of the shop-windows, which were already beginning to take on a look of holiday gorgeousness. So down-town they went, and Miss Blake not alone bought the jelly, but so many other things as well, that presently Nan began to have a feeling that for such a poor woman the governess was inclined to be extravagant.

She told Delia so when they were alone together that evening, Miss Blake having gone upstairs to write some letters.

"Oh, I guess you needn't worry," the woman said.

"But you don't know how many things she bought," persisted Nan. "I'm sure she can't afford it. Just think, a woman that works for her living the way she has to! But do you know, Delia, I believe there's something mysterious about her, anyway. She seems to see right into your mind--what you're thinking about; and every once in a while she lets out a hint that the next minute she looks as if she wished she hadn't said. I've noticed it lots and lots of times, and I'm sure she's trying to hide something. What do you s'pose it is? What fun it would be if she were a princess in disguise."

"Well, she ain't," Delia almost snapped. "She's just a good little woman that's trying to do her duty as far as I can make out, and if she spends money you must remember she has only herself to support."