Billie"s voice in her extreme anger was very stern. She carefully avoided calling Nancy by name. She felt if she spoke the name of her friend, she must cry and not for anything did she want to humble herself just then.
"I tell you I won"t explain," e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Nancy. "I"ve done nothing wrong and I think you are very hard and unjust. It"s because you are still a child about some things, Billie. When you are older and have had more experience, you will learn not to be a prig."
Older and more experienced! Now all the saints defend us! Billie laughed bitterly. Both girls were on the point of weeping and perhaps, if their anger had changed to tears at that moment, much bitterness might have been saved them. But they were interrupted by Mr. Campbell, who now appeared, walking at a leisurely gait up the path.
"Well, well, children! Here is devotion indeed," he exclaimed when he espied his daughter and her friend standing stock still in the pouring rain. "So intimate and absorbed in each other"s society that you are oblivious to the weather! That"s the right kind of friendship. I would not have it any other way. How are you, little daughter?" he asked, kissing Billie and shaking hands with Nancy at the same time. "And how"s little daughter"s friend?"
Not for worlds would they have disclosed the real truth to Mr. Campbell.
Billie drew her arm through her father"s and Nancy followed them to the house.
"Do you think the rain will ever let up, Papa?" asked Billie, resting her cheek against her father"s shoulder.
Nancy felt suddenly frightfully homesick for her own bluff good-natured parent.
"Well, it once rained forty days and forty nights, you know," said Mr.
Campbell. "And what"s happened before may happen again."
Habitual wranglers regard quarrels as mere ripples on the surface and soon forget about them, but the two girls were unaccustomed to such scenes and their feelings were deeply lacerated.
"Let not the sun go down upon your wrath," Billie thought, as she lay beside Nancy that night, but she remembered that Nancy had called her a spy and her soul was filled with bitterness.
CHAPTER XIV.
A LETTER THAT CAME THOUGH IT WAS NEVER SENT.
The two girls put the width of the bed between them that night. Each lay stiffly on the very edge of the mattress and silently pondered over the situation. Anger was not a self-indulgence with either of them and the attack was so unusual that it left them both unnerved and shaken. Nancy had only played with her food at dinner and Billie, who had eaten without an appet.i.te, now felt the discomfort of a burning indigestion. At last, as the hours dragged on, they fell asleep, each profoundly unhappy.
Long ago the two friends had dropped the formality which usually exists between guest and hostess, no matter how intimate. Their relations were as those of two sisters. For the Motor Maids had become as one family in their wanderings together. But next morning, Nancy, still feeling the sting of fancied wrongs, suddenly recalled the fact that she was accepting hospitality from one who no longer liked her. It was all very absurd, but so does the young person at the awkward age between girlhood and womanhood often exaggerate trivial things and enlarge on fancied injustice.
Foolish, pretty Nancy permitted herself to slip into the most extreme state of wretchedness. She imagined that her friend, whom in her heart she loved devotedly, had treated her with unnecessary cruelty and sternness. She got it into her silly little head that Billie had confided the meeting in the garden to the others. She was ashamed and mortified and she felt indeed that the whole world had turned against her. Mr.
Campbell was cold to her. Miss Helen Campbell hardly civil Mary and Elinor looked at her askance. There was not a word of truth in it, of course; it was just a figment of Nancy"s morbid imaginings. Miss Campbell was bored to extinction with the continued rain. Mr. Campbell was preoccupied because of business engagements of great importance, and Mary and Elinor, if the truth must be told, were intensely homesick; and who would not have been with home on the other side of the world and rain pouring ceaselessly on this side? As for Billie, she tried to be exactly the same as usual, but the cloud of an unsettled disagreement hovered between them.
Therefore after a week of steady rain and black depression which did not seem more profound in Nancy than in anyone else, silly little Nancy took a bold step. Putting on her overshoes and mackintosh late one afternoon, she slipped out of the house and hastened down the avenue. On the road, she hailed an empty "riksha returning from some suburban home and gave Mme. Fontaine"s address in Tokyo.
Nancy was in search of sympathy and of someone who would tell her she had done right when she knew she had done wrong.
Mme. Fontaine was in and would be delighted to see Miss Brown, so she was informed at the widow"s front door, and Nancy, a little frightened, now that the deed was done, was ushered into the beautiful drawing-room.
"Why, you sweet child, this is a great pleasure," exclaimed that lady herself, entering at the same moment by another door. "Where are your friends? Are you alone?" she added looking around for the others.
"Oh, yes," answered Nancy, embarra.s.sed and agitated.
"Not even the austere old lady who chaperones you?" asked the other drawing the young girl down beside her on the couch and looking into the blue eyes which suddenly welled up with tears and overflowed,
"Why, my dear, are you unhappy? What is the matter? Tell me all about it," e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Mme. Fontaine, unpinning Nancy"s hat and drawing the curly head down on her shoulder.
So it happened that Nancy Brown unburdened herself to the sympathetic Widow of Shanghai, and gave an entirely biased and favorable-to-herself account of the incident in the garden.
Mme. Fontaine sat silent for a while after the story was finished, and Nancy wondered if the charming new friend had heard what she had been saying.
"Do you think Miss Campbell would consent to let you make a visit, Nancy?" she asked presently, calling her Nainsi, as if it were a French name.
Nancy drooped her long lashes.
"I don"t know," she answered.
Mme. Fontaine gave one of her inscrutable Mona Lisa smiles and rose from the couch.
"We will try her and see. Does she know you were out walking?"
"No," answered Nancy struggling to keep back her tears.
"Does anyone in the house know?"
She shook her head.
The widow sat down at a carved desk inlaid with mother-of-pearl, and wrote the following note:
"My dear Miss Campbell:
"I trust you will not think I have been unpardonably presumptuous in keeping one of your girls over night with me. She had evidently set out for a long walk and chance brought us together. The child was wet and tired and I have kept her for tea. As the rain is still pouring, she has consented to remain over night with your permission which I cannot but feel sure will be granted under the circ.u.mstances. With the very kindest regards for you and your household, I am,
"Faithfully yours,
"ANIELA FONTAINE."
Never was cordial and polite note couched in more non-committal language.
It was sent out by a messenger and Miss Campbell sat painfully up in bed to read it. Both knees and one wrist were swathed in bandages of wintergreen liniment and a hot water bottle lay against one hip,
"Why, I didn"t know the child had left the house," she exclaimed, when she had finished reading the letter and pa.s.sed it on to the three remaining Motor Maids. "How did she happen to go alone on a tramp like that? What am I to do? I can"t order her to return without being exceedingly rude, but I do wish Nancy hadn"t been so reckless. She ought never to have left the grounds alone. Surely the garden is quite large enough for exercising in, if anyone wanted to make the effort."
The little spinster groaned and slipped down among her pillows again.
The girls were silent. Mary secretly sympathized with Nancy. It would be rather fascinating to spend a night in the widow"s interesting home.
Elinor disapproved slightly at this unconventional visit, but it is doubtful if she would have declined the invitation if she had been in Nancy"s place. As for Billie, she was puzzled and unhappy. She felt sure that there was something back of the departure of her friend. She wished with all her heart they had made up their differences. She yearned for Nancy and her soul was filled with forebodings. She felt somehow as if Nancy had died. That night, with the sheet over her head, she indulged in a fit of weeping and resolved to settle all differences the first moment they could get alone.
Why should Nancy Brown have unexpectedly grown up like this and become so independent and secretive? Elinor, the eldest of the four girls, had never shown a disposition to have affairs and write notes. For her part, Billie would have liked to go on in the same jolly old way forever, with or without beaux. It was all one to her. But Nancy was different. The society of her friends was no longer an unmixed pleasure and she was beginning to crave more excitement and admiration than was good for her.
The next day was like a dozen of its fellows, wet and muggy. The roads were too slippery for the "Comet," and as Miss Campbell still kept her bed with rheumatism, it was decided that Billie should go alone for Nancy in a "riksha.
She was so eager to make up with her friend, that she felt as if the reconciliation had already taken place and her faithful heart was filled with happiness. She had made up her mind to humble herself by offering Nancy an apology. After all, was it the act of true friendship to pick out all the defects and flaws in a friend"s nature?
"A real friend is blind to everything but the best in another friend,"
reasoned Billie, as her "riksha splashed along the road, drawn by Komatsu.