THE CURE FOR QUARRELS
As if to make positive that she intended to do exactly as she pleased,
especially if the doing of it were opposed by the anxious Margot, Rosa
rushed to dress.
“I’ve been in long enough,” she assured Nancy, “I’d die if I were
cooped up here any longer. I phoned Gar, told him the doctor said I had
to go out--”
“Rosa!” Nancy’s manner showed more disappointment than shock.
“Now, Nannily, don’t go getting excited. My ankle wasn’t bad, really.
It was just fun to have a lot of attention. You have no idea how
precious little of it I get, usually.”
Nancy sighed. Her own vivid personality felt eclipsed beside the
turbulent, changeable cousin. She, Nancy, simply had to be polite and
accept things as Rosa offered them, but with each new turn she found
herself more and more baffled. Even if she were company and had to
appear pleased with things, she was feeling rather tired of Rosa’s
whims. They weren’t funny at all; not half so funny as just anything
that Ted would do. But why think of Ted now? He was having a fine time
with boys at a boys’ camp, and Nancy was wishing she had gone to a
girls’ camp with Ruth Ashley.
“What are you going to put on?” asked Rosa very casually, too casually
to be taken as Rosa tried to make it.
“I’m not going to change,” replied Nancy. “I’m not going out.”
“Not going out!” exclaimed Rosa, as if such a contingency had never
occurred to her. “Why, Nancy _I’m_ going.”
“Go ahead,” said Nancy. This was casual.
“But _I_ want you to come,” Rosa’s voice was a key higher.
“Sorry, but _I_ don’t want to go.”
Following that surprising statement Rosa rushed around, tossing
helpless garments from one end of the room to another, as if taking
her spite out on them. She wasn’t saying a word to Nancy; Nancy wasn’t
saying a word to her.
Presently Margot came in for the trays, and as she gathered things up
she made known her disapproval of Rosa’s conduct.
“I don’t like to scold, Rosalind, when your cousin has just come, and
your father is leaving--”
“Oh, go ahead and scold, Maggie,” said Rosa impertinently. “Get it out
of your system. Your eyes look bulgy and--”
“Rosalind! I will not take any impudence. You know that,” replied
Margot quite properly. “You may be too big to be put in a corner, but
you _would_ miss your allowance, and I’ve got to have some control of
you if I am to be responsible for your welfare.”
At this threat, that her allowance would be withheld if she did not do
better, Rosa quieted down--some. She stopped throwing things around but
she did not speak to Nancy. Neither did Nancy speak to her. In fact,
she felt like doing almost anything else, for her vacation was being
spoiled just because Rosa was so obstinate.
If only she hadn’t come! If only she had gone with patient little Miss
Manners, who loved her. Certainly Rosa couldn’t care anything about her
and treat her this way.
Once Nancy started on this line of reasoning the inevitable was bound
to happen. In feeling sorry for herself she was going to become
homesick!
“I should think you would be ashamed--” began Margot, but Rosa checked
her.
“I am, if that’s any good to know. I’m always ashamed, but you don’t
have to make it worse, Margot.”
Nancy glanced over at Rosa, who was doing what she usually did in
dressing: trying to make her waist line look smaller by actually
making it look larger. She was pulling a girdle in so tight that the
rebellious little bunches of flesh pouched out in pudgy pockets above
and below.
She was ashamed--of being too fat! As Nancy realized this her
resentment cooled. She did love Rosalind and perhaps Rosalind loved
her. Just because Rosa was too stout and not wise enough to understand
that such a thing has little, if anything, to do with personality, her
young life was being embittered. She imagined that every one slighted
her; that every one laughed at her; that every one was making fun of
her. Whereas, she was only a growing girl with her growth unbalanced.
The dark blue dress that Rosa was adjusting might have been a school
uniform in the severity of its lines; but Rosa had declared she could
only wear dark colors; that Orilla had told her so.
The longer both girls held silence against each other, the harder it
was going to be to break it. Nancy was not ungenerous, but she was
human, and no girl wants to “give in” when she feels herself to have
been the one injured. Margot noticed this set expression, and the
girls’ lack of conversation. Also, she noticed Nancy biting her lip.
“Not quarreling with your cousin, I hope, Rosalind,” said the woman
severely. “I do believe I shall have to have a talk with your father.”
“He’d love it,” scoffed Rosa, saucily.
“Very well,” said Margot with finality, “I shall.”
The butler had been in twice for the trays and now everything was
cleared away. Rosa was dressed, hatted and coated, and she was only
pretending to fuss with her hair. Nancy jumped up and with a hasty “I’m
going to read, Rosa,” flew into her own room.
She knew this would make matters worse; that the only time to stop a
quarrel is before it starts, but Nancy was not equal, just then, to
reasonable arguments. All she could see, feel or know, was that she
wished she were almost any place else than at Fernlode.
Being away from home, visiting and having things unpleasant! It was so
easy to bring tears to her eyes now, and she so rarely cried at home.
She just had to choke back the tears that were forcing themselves up
her throat and trying to reach her eyes.
Why should she have been made so miserable? Why was Rosa so
unreasonable? What if she was fat, wasn’t Nancy thin? Didn’t her
friends always call her “skinny” and she hadn’t even bothered about it
any more than she had fussed over the “Nincy-niney-nanny-notey in a red
petticoaty,” Ted’s fighting chant or battle cry, as their mother always
termed his childish taunt.
Rosa was going downstairs--Nancy heard her grumbling as she went, and
it seemed Margot had carried out her threat, for Rosa was talking back
and scoffing at the commands evidently sent by her father.
“Serves her right!” was Nancy’s first impulsive criticism. Then again
came the thought of Ted. How she and he would quarrel, how she would
declare she hoped her mother would do all sorts of things to him
(which, of course, she never did), and then in the end, just as Ted
was realizing that something in the way of discipline might possibly
be visited upon him, Nancy would always relent. She would even step
between him and the impending evil.
That was exactly how she felt now. After all, Rosa was such a baby. She
hadn’t learned from contact with companions, for, according to her own
story, she had never had a real chum.
“Ted, Ted, Ted!” kept persistingly challenging Nancy, until she knew
she would have to do something for Rosa. It was not being generous,
really, it was just doing what she had been brought up to do--to be
brave enough to be humble.
She flew to her mirror and daubbed at her eyes; they looked rather
puckery. Then she flirted her powder puff around her nose, that looked
decidedly shiny.
“Wish I had put on my red dress,” she told her reflection in the glass,
“but there’s no time now. If I run along with Rosa, surely Uncle
Frederic won’t scold her.”
On the broad stair landing, where the big brass lanterns and the lovely
soft palms opened the way into the living room, she found the surprised
Rosa.
“Why, Nancy!” she exclaimed. “I thought--”
“But I don’t care for that book,” said Nancy evasively. “Where are you
going?”
“Horrid old Margot--”
“Hush! Let’s make believe we’re--where’s Dell? I thought she was here.”
“Gone. She was here. Dad said I couldn’t go out. They’re going to the
park--” Rosa’s voice was full of rancor.
“Can’t we go out in the cove in your flat-bottom boat? I love to row,
and it’s safe in the cove, isn’t it?” asked Nancy, glad to think of a
reasonable plan.
“Too safe. Like swimming doll ducks in the bath tub. But we’ll go. I’ll
ask dad. He--has--summoned me--”
Just then, down the long hall strode the gentleman in question. He was
waving a paper at Nancy.
“A letter for you, Antoinette,” he announced gaily. “A steamer letter
from your mother--”
“Oh, goody!” exclaimed Nancy happily. “Come on, Rosa. Let’s read it.”
“But dad wants to see me--”
“Oh, never mind, Boots,” he replied, just giving the willful one a
playful shake. “Give dad a kiss and promise--promise to be good.”
Whereat Rosa actually sprang upon the foot with the injured ankle,
hugging her father so impulsively that Nancy instantly decided she was
just like Ted.
Is there anything lovelier than the calm after the storm? Arm in arm
Rosa and Nancy sauntered off, their happy laughter ringing through old
Fernlode, their voices blending in genuine affection until reaching
the water’s edge, Rosa showed Nancy how she “megaphoned” down the lake
to No Man’s Land, a little island, desolate and alone. Nancy did the
phoning by cupping her hands and shouting in the weird way that always
provokes an echo.
“Ted was such a funny little fellow when he was very small,” Nancy told
her cousin. “He used to say he loved to go under bridges, where he
could hear his voice after he was finished with it.”
“Finished with it?” queried Rosa.
“Yes; that’s the way he used to describe an echo.”
“Oh, how funny!” yelled Rosa. “Let’s give a couple of echoes for Ted.”
They shouted again and again, until the echoes became a mere jumble of
sounds.
“I must read Mumsey’s letter,” insisted Nancy presently. “Just let’s
sit in the boat and--read it.”
The steamer letter proved the treat it was bound to be, Nancy hugging
every word, every syllable, while Rosa leaned over, fascinated.
“Your mother is--wonderful, Nan,” she said finally. “No wonder
you--you’ve got so much sense.”
“Have I?” asked Nancy, unwilling to take that sort of compliment. “No
one, not any of my friends, ever say things like that to me; I’m so
flighty,” she admitted quite frankly.
“But you’re not scrappy like I am,” spoke Rosa. “I just wonder why I
love to--oppose folks.” This little sentence sounded tragic from Rosa’s
lips. Her round, dimpily face fell into serious lines as she expressed
this query, and even her baby-blue eyes looked far away where they
could see nothing.
“You’re not scrappy,” Nancy felt bound to defend. “Maybe you just
imagine folks are opposing you,” she hazarded.
“I know they are,” insisted Rosa sadly.