LOVELY LADY BETTY
It seems the ankle was not sprained after all. Rosa spent one day
trying on all her sick-spell caps, the little gifts she had not yet
had a chance to wear, trying on her fancy silk robes--there was that
beauty, Betty had brought her from Paris, it was glorious and she had
never really worn it before.
Nancy never before had seen such beautiful things, and Rosa insisted
that she too try some of them on. It was in this way the cousin
tactfully bestowed upon Nancy a lot of pretty things “just presents I
should have sent on Christmas and on birthdays,” insisted Rosa.
“But wait until Dad and Betty come,” threatened Rosa. “They’ll want me
all put in splints, see if they don’t. Betty seems to think I’ll melt,
like gelatine, if I’m left out of the ice-box,” she finished, a little
bitterly.
“Now, Rosa,” objected Nancy, “maybe you’re not fair. I can guess that
Betty feels like your mother, even if she isn’t, and that would make
her worry a lot more about you. Since I’ve been away from my mother
I know what a lot of things she has been doing for me, in spite of
keeping up her library business. My clothes seem to be all upset
already--”
“Give them to Margot, she adores fixing clothes,” interrupted Rosa,
losing the point Nancy had tried to make regarding the pretty
step-mother. “I honestly do believe she musses my things up just for
the joy of straightening them out again.”
“How funny! But I don’t really mean that I can’t look after my things,
Rosa,” explained Nancy, “although I did use to think no girl in the
world could hate such work more than I did--”
“I don’t mind it a bit,” interrupted Rosa grandly. “I often wash out
laces and my fine stockings--”
“Oh,” said Nancy with one of her twisted smiles, “I don’t mind just
that, either. But Rosa, hadn’t you better get off that foot? You’ve
been standing on it for almost half an hour.”
“Just as you say, Coz,” agreed Rosa, who did seem strangely willing to
agree with most of Nancy’s suggestions. “You don’t know what this ankle
means to me. I haven’t told you--”
“What?” asked Nancy, bluntly.
“Oh, something--great!” and the baby blue eyes fairly whirled around in
Rosa’s face as she turned them up, down, from right to left and then
the other way, expressing the wonderment she had so vaguely hinted at.
“Think you might tell me,” teased Nancy. In fact the big secret between
Rosa and Orilla was growing more and more mystifying to the visitor.
“I do intend to tell you, of course, Nancy,” confided Rosa, her face
falling into the rarely serious lines which this subject could provoke.
“But not just--yet.” She drawled these last words intentionally and
the refusal to answer her question piqued Nancy. In fact, she dropped
Rosa’s prettiest scarf down in a heap without even pretending to fold
it.
“Mad?” teased Rosa.
“No, of course not. But Rosa, it is queer, the way you act about that
girl.” She just couldn’t say Orilla.
“Nan-cee.” Rosa had both her arms around the pouting cousin. “You’re
not jealous! You see--oh, you see I haven’t had any body else; not
anybody, and Orilla has been kind to me--”
“Even Gar doesn’t like her,” flung back Nancy.
“No, that’s so. He hates her. But then you see, I’ve been an awful
nuisance to Gar on account of it all.”
“How--a nuisance?”
“Nancy Brandon, you’re what my dad calls an idealist!” exclaimed Rosa,
bubbling back into her usual jolly mood. “Know what that is? I’ve
looked it up for it’s dad’s pet word. It means one who--”
“Ideals I suppose,” said Nancy, herself recovering the good humored
mood. “Well, never mind, Rosa. Just so long as you don’t run away any
more, or break any more ankles, I won’t mind,” and she wound the lately
despised scarf around Rosa’s plump shoulders, with great affectation.
It was turning out to be a rainy day, so that the girls’ enforced
idleness was not a real hardship. They were having a splendid time,
especially Nancy, who, being just a normal girl, delighted in seeing
beautiful clothes. And Rosa did have them--stacks of them. Not only
was she the possessor of gowns by the dozen, but the finest of silk
underthings, some of them so cob-webby that Nancy frankly questioned
their utility.
“Please don’t give me anything else, Rosa,” she pleaded. “I shan’t know
what to do with such finery.”
“Don’t worry, love,” replied Rosa. “Nobody knows exactly what to do
with them until they’ve been worn a time or two. That’s dad’s joke
about the man’s boots, you know. He couldn’t get them on until after he
had worn them a time or two!”
“Pretty good!” agreed Nancy. “I’ll remember that. But Rosa--oh, here
comes the car!”
“With Betty and dad. Let me get into bed. I must look sick enough to
ward off a scolding!”
She dropped such bits of clothing as she had been draping herself in,
and scuttled into bed. Nancy felt quite nervous enough at the prospect
of meeting the pretty Lady Betty, but with Rosa’s condition to be
explained, the home-coming seemed rather exciting.
Margot rushed into the bedroom. “Your father is coming, my dear child,”
she pronounced, “and Mrs. Betty. Now please don’t get them all worried
and anxious--” she paused as she patted the innumerable pillows.
“Get them worried! Indeed! And my poor foot--Hello, Daddy!” called out
Rosalind. “My leg’s broke!”
The bombastic greeting was taken up by her daddy who promptly and
lustily shouted:
“Hello, Rosalinda! Which leg?”
Proudly Rosa stuck the injured member, in its white bandages, outside
the bed covering.
“That one! ‘Busted’ badly!” she mocked. “But Daddy, there’s Nancy.
She’s scared to death of me, Nancy, come over here--”
Nancy knew Rosa’s father, the handsome Uncle Frederic who had visited
them in their own little home, so she was not at all embarrassed in
greeting him.
He was as tall and handsome as ever, Nancy could not help noticing, and
his welcome to her made her feel almost comfortable--if only she had
the meeting of his new wife over with.
“Where’s Betty?” asked Rosa, rather quietly when her father had taken
his place beside her bed.
“She’ll be along presently. We had rather a tiring drive--the roads are
in their usual bad summer condition. But tell me about the accident,
Linda? How did it all happen?”
As father and daughter talked, Nancy noticed how particular he was to
know as much and more than Rosa seemed anxious to tell. He was most
solicitous about Rosa’s condition, however, and so affectionate that
he called her a different name each time he addressed her, yet he was
very positive in his manner. Evidently, he was not too sure of his
daughter’s prudence.
“Of course, it’s all right for you to go out to the park with Garfield
and Adell,” he said, “but never alone, Rosy-kins, not even with Nancy
and in the day-time. Remember, I don’t want to have you lost in the New
Hampshire forests, you know.”
Rosa fairly glowed under her father’s interest and affection. Sitting
by the window and watching this play, Nancy realized what Rosa’s father
meant to her--just what Nancy’s mother meant to Nancy.
“We don’t know until we are away from it,” she reasoned, choking back
the wave of home-sickness that threatened to creep over her. “I don’t
see why Rosa thinks she is left out of everything; that she is too fat
to be happy,” went on Nancy’s deliberation. “Her father just idolizes
her.”
A little flutter from the doorway seemed to answer that, for presently
the lovely Betty--Lady Betty, as Nancy was privately calling the new
aunt, appeared before them.
She _was_ lovely; Nancy conceded that instantly, and surrounding her,
like a halo of loveliness, was a faint something which recalled to
Nancy the perfection of Miss Manners’ hand-made laces--a combination
of inspiration and perfectly chosen materials. No wonder her Uncle
Frederic had been fascinated by Betty Burnett. Surely she was lovely.
“Sweet-heart!” she almost sang to Rosalind. “What has happened to you?
Don’t tell me--”
“Busted me leg!” sang back Rosa, impishly. “But, Betty dear, there’s
Nancy. You are going to love her because she--is skinny!”
The next few moments were lost to Nancy in her confusing introduction.
Betty was being kind, kind to the point of gush, Nancy feared, but
then Rosa had been absurdly blunt and so had sort of challenged their
meeting. The explosion of slang betrayed Rosa’s own feelings. She was
insisting that Betty would love a thin girl and intimating broadly that
she hated fat ones.
While all this was going on, and especially a little later when Uncle
Frederic had arranged his wife’s blue cushions in the big blue bird
chair (Betty was, of course, a dainty blonde), Nancy found her eyes
devouring the picture.
This was the wonderful, the beautiful Betty who had taken--so Rosa
said--Rosa’s place in the tall iron-gray man’s heart. Who had put
Orilla out of what she had been brought up to consider her home, and
worst of all, if true, it was she who had brought unhappiness to little
Rosa, because her own flawless beauty was contrasting so painfully with
the ungraceful lines of Rosalind Fernell.
It must be remembered that Nancy Brandon was a girl whose home
influence was almost opposite that of Rosa’s. Her mother and brother
Ted were dear, darling chums, all and each a part of the other’s
existence. Also, that Nancy’s mother was employed in a public library,
so that books had become a real part of Nancy’s life. And books are
very good friends indeed. They almost always try to make folks more
tolerant and more reasonable with their surroundings and companions.
But here was Rosa, a girl who only read books when she had to, or when
Margot threatened her with something worse to do. She had had little
chance to learn the simple things that stood for so much in Nancy’s
life, and while Nancy could not have reasoned this way, it is only fair
to understand Rosa and her peculiar self-made troubles.
Lady Betty was not exerting herself very much, in spite of Rosa’s
predicament. There had been the tiring drive, as Uncle Frederic had
explained, and there was the sea-going voyage to-morrow--as everybody
knew.
And Nancy was glad they were going away. Rosa had been positively
rebellious ever since the pretty Betty had come into her room. Was it
sheer nervousness? Nancy wondered. How perfectly silly for Rosa to keep
sticking that bandaged foot outside the lace-edged sheet. And how
absurd for her to keep using such senseless slang! Calling it a “busted
foot” and insisting that she was “laid up for repairs”--it sounded like
pure affectation to Nancy, who, while being no prude, was not a rebel,
either.