Part 13 (1/2)
”Miss Leland has changed us. Charlotte Spencer is going to be your roommate from now on--and--and I'm going in with--with Mildred.”
”That's--a--a good idea,” replied Nancy; sarcasm was a thousand miles from her mind, and she spoke really only for the sake of sounding as if all differences had been forgotten; but a more ill-chosen sentence could not have fallen from her lips.
”I suppose--you--you're glad to be rid of me,” said Alma, her lips quivering. ”Anyway, you'll have Charlotte, and she's ever so much more congenial with you than I am.”
Nancy did not answer. If Alma had not made that last reference to Charlotte she would have had Nancy back in a moment, but there is a little devil who takes a delight in twisting people's tongues when they most need to be inspired with the right thing to say.
With her night-gown and dressing-gown over her arm, and her sponge-bag in her hand, Alma walked in silence to the door. There she paused, and like Lot's wife flung back at Nancy one piteous parting look, which, alas, met only the back of Nancy's down-bent head. The door closed.
Nancy sprang up, and crossed the room, running, while the spools from her overturned basket rolled off placidly under the bed. Then she paused; pride conquered the tenderness in her heart at that moment, bringing in its trail a sequence of unhappy days.
”No---it won't do to admit I'm wrong. I'm not, and I'll just let her find it out.”
And having voiced this stern resolution, she flung herself down on the bed and, burying her face in the pillows, cried herself into a doze; while, separated from her by a thin part.i.tion of lath and plaster, Alma made up her new bed, and bedewed it with her doleful tears.
CHAPTER X
THE OGRE REAPPEARS
”Hope you haven't forgotten that you've bound yourself in an engagement with me for the theatre to-morrow, Nannie, old dear,” called Charlotte from her customary location during leisure hours--namely the piano bench. ”I've reserved seats for 'The Countess Betsey'--nice, light, loads of good Viennese tunes--nothing lofty about it. Miss Drinkwater had a cute little plan for us--wanted us to go to hear--or see--I don't know just what the right word is--some production of Euripides in the original. I said 'No'--very politely. Too politely perhaps--I had to repeat it three separate and distinct times. I explained to her that while I just adored Euripides, and loved nothing better than Greek as she is spoke, my const.i.tution craved something a bit gayer than 'Medea'--in the original. I hinted modestly that I'd been overworking a bit lately--and that my mighty brain needed something that it didn't have to chew eighty-five times before swallowing. Aren't you going to thank me?”
”Oh, I do--thanks _horribly_,” laughed Nancy. ”Can't you see us sitting through a merry little Greek play, trying to weep in the right places, and not to laugh when everyone but the villainess had been stabbed or poisoned or fed to the lions?”
”Gee--but couldn't we be lofty when we got back?” said Charlotte. ”I'd say, 'How sublime were those lines in Act II, Scene 4, where, in a voice thrilling with sublime hate, the frenzied woman shrieks ”Logos Nike anthropos Socrates!”' And you would glow with fervor, and say '_Zoue mou sas agapo_.' I tell you what, when it comes to dead languages----”
”It's too late, I hope, for you to get enthusiastic about the idea now,” interrupted Nancy, firmly. ”It wouldn't be a bit unlike you to get so carried away with it, that you'd suddenly change your mind about not going--and I'll tell you right now, that if you do I am emphatically _not_ with you. I don't like to improve my mind when I'm on a holiday--and Sat.u.r.days come only once a week.”
”You should thirst for every opportunity to improve your understanding,” reproved Charlotte, who could chatter away like a magpie, while her nimble fingers never lost a note, or stumbled in the rhythm of the lively dance tune she was playing.
”Don't forget _our_ little party, Alma,” said Mildred Lloyd.
”Mademoiselle is going to chaperone us--I asked her yesterday. We're going in on the eleven-fifty-four, and the boys are going to meet us at Delmonico's at one.”
Charlotte cast a sidelong glance at Nancy; she understood that Alma possessed all this information already, and that Mildred was making the announcement simply to excite the other girls' curiosity.
Since their quarrel Alma and Nancy, chiefly for the sake of outward appearances, had called an armistice. But while Nancy had not confided the first hint of the quarrel to Charlotte, poor Alma, who could never smother anything in her own heart, had unbosomed herself completely to Mildred. Needless to say, Mildred, who had disliked Nancy from the beginning, was not warmed toward her by any of the details in Alma's narrative that concerned herself. She knew that Alma had not told Nancy about their arrangements to go to the theatre, meeting two boys in town, of whom Frank Barrows was to be Alma's cavalier; and consequently, she surmised, quite correctly, that Nancy would be hurt when she spoke about the plan.
Alma shot a quick, uncertain look at her sister, and blushed; but Nancy only smiled, and asked, casually:
”What are you going to see?”
Alma's expression changed to one of relief.
”'Oh, Trixie!' Aren't we, Mildred?”
”Uh-huh. Everyone says it's a scream, and the music is perfect. I wanted to go to a regular play, but then I thought the boys would like a musical comedy better. By the way, Alma, I think I'll ask Miss Leland to let us go in on the ten-fourteen--I want to do some shopping.
It'll get us in at eleven, and we'll have two hours. I promised Madame Lepage that I'd come in to talk over a dress I want for the holidays--and then I've simply got to get a new hat.”
The following morning, after the first study period, which closed the labors of the day at nine-thirty, Nancy heard a timid knock at the door. It was Alma, gloved and bonneted in her ”Sunday-best,” but with an agitated expression that was ill-suited to her festive appearance.