Chapter 7

certain to say good-bye!"

"Well, and I really thought so. I believe now she'd have said good-bye, if--"

"If I hadn't been such a--brat? Say it right out, Delia! You mean it and you might as well say what you think," broke in the girl bitterly.

Delia turned on her heel and stalked grimly down stairs. A second later she heard a rush of flying feet behind her, and the next moment two arms were locked about her neck.

"Poor old Delia," cried Nan, in one of her sudden bursts of remorse. "I'm the horridest girl that ever lived! I know it as well as you do, and if you weren't the patientest thing in the world you wouldn't stand it for a minute. But don't you go away from me too, Delia! Please don't! Honest Injun, I'll try to behave! Cross my heart I will. And I tell you this much, I feel just awfully about Miss Blake. I shouldn't wonder a bit but it would snow tonight, and she hasn't a place to go and no money, and--O dear! I feel like a person that ought to be in jail!"

Delia extricated herself gently from the clinging arms. "What makes you think Miss Blake's as poverty-stricken as that?" she asked.

"Oh, I don't know," responded the girl. "But I just feel she is. And she is so little too. She looked so glad to get into this house that I guess she never had much of a place to stay before."

"She don't dress like a person that's next-door to a beggar," mused Delia.

"No, she doesn't. She has really pretty things, hasn't she? But I guess they're made over and cast-off, or something. Maybe the lady she lived with last gave them to her?" speculated Nan.

"Maybe she did," said Delia.

The two made their way slowly down to the kitchen. It was beginning to grow dark and the dinner must be prepared.

"I never in all my life saw such little hands and feet," the girl pursued. "And she's dreadfully particular about them. There's never a speck on her fingers that she doesn't run right up and scrub them, and she wears the cunningest slippers I ever saw."

"I guess she comes of nice folks," said Delia, as she began to peel the potatoes.

"Wonder why she doesn't stay with them then?" put in Nan.

"Perhaps they're dead."

Nan pondered. Her own motherless life had given her a very tender sympathy for those whose "folks" were dead. For the first time she felt sorry for Miss Blake. She was uneasy and distressed. It made her shift about uncomfortably in her chair.

"Goodness me!" she ejaculated impatiently at last, and then one of her wild impulses took possession of her and she ran frantically up into her own room and flung on her coat and hat.

"The whole thing's as plain as preaching. Why didn't I think of it before?" she said to herself, with a shake of impatience. "Mr. Turner told Miss Blake if she was worried or anything to go to him. She hasn't any money, and she's left here, so of course that's where she is. I'll go and bring her back."

The front door opened and shut with a bang, and Nan was out in the street alone. As she scudded down the pavement the electric lights suddenly gleamed out pale and vivid from their lofty globes, and sent wavering shadows flashing across her path.

"It's pretty late and it'll be dark as a pocket in a little while," thought she; but that did not detain her, and she raced on, putting block after block between her and home in her ardor to make reparation and to lighten her heart of its weight of compunction.