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, but100 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 from101 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 her102 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.103 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 do104 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............