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."