When the excitement died down, and Nancy found an opportunity to “look Rosa over,” as she expressed her scrutiny of the cousin’s physical condition, she found so many cuts, scratches, bruises and other marks of violence, that she really wanted to call Margot in to attend to their cleansing and bandaging.

“I tell you, Nance, they’re all right,” insisted Rosa rather petulantly. “I don’t poison easily and those are all scratches from the trees and bushes.”

“But just see that long cut on the side of your leg—”

“A wire, I guess it was a barbed wire—”

“That’s always dangerous,” interrupted Nancy. “The rust is one of the worst things. Rosa, how could you be so silly?” Nancy’s patience was by no means abundant. She213 hated to see Rosa’s skin torn that way; besides, she realized the danger of it.

“Nancy Brandon!” called out the cousin in a determined voice, “you have no idea what I went through. Orilla acted like a lunatic and I was honestly afraid of her. She seems quite fond of you—” there was sarcasm in this—“that is, she spoke of you as if you and she were pals. Just another one of her oddities, of course, so I let it go that way.”

Here was Nancy’s chance to tell Rosa why the girl considered her friendly. But the hot flush in her cheeks warned her. Besides, there was in Nancy’s mind a new thought. It came when Orilla had smiled at her in the woods. Perhaps Nancy could help Orilla!

So the moment passed and the cousins continued to bathe and bind the scratches. Rosa’s hands were cruelly torn and, as the girls talked, Rosa gave Nancy an inkling of the whole absurd plot.

“I never expected she would ask me to chop down trees, of course,” explained Rosa. “She had always insisted that what I needed was214 hard work. She made fun of me for being soft, and I suppose that made me mad. At any rate, she promised that I would lose five pounds a week if I faithfully followed her advice.”

“Five pounds a week?” repeated Nancy, incredulously.

“Yes. And you see, if I lost twenty pounds in the month the folks are in Europe I would be quite—quite slender when they came back,” and she smiled so prettily that Nancy wondered Why she wanted to spoil those dimples with trimming off their scallops.

“And she was going to do all that—with violent exercise?” Nancy questioned in amazement.

“That and—starvation.” Rosa uttered the last word tragically. “I didn’t promise to starve but—now, Coz, haven’t I been humble enough? You don’t want to hear any more of the horrible details, do you?”

“Well, I’d like to know,” continued Nancy cautiously, “why she wanted the trees cut215 down? What was she going to do with them?”

“That’s just what I wanted to know, too,” Rosa said in reply. “I knew for a long time that she had some secret scheme; you know the night I hurt my foot we saw that she had a hatchet in her car, but she has never told me what the real plan was. I’ve known Orilla since I was a baby, and I suppose I’m used to her ways, but I must say she is secretive. And sly! I couldn’t find out the least thing, ever, that she didn’t want me to know.”

“Yes, I think she is like that,” agreed Nancy, thereby dismissing for a time at least the mystery of the plot. “But what we have got to do now is to fix up her damages. Rosa, I do wish you would let Margot see that big scratch. I’m no good at nursing and I don’t want to take the responsibility—”

“I’ll be as beautiful as ever in a day or two—see if I don’t,” replied Rosa, making desperate efforts not to wince as she poured the disinfectant over her hands.

“But when Margot smells this drug store216 she’ll surely suspect,” intimated Nancy, for, as she said, the disinfectants had made havoc with the atmosphere of Rosa’s little dressing room, that adjoined her bath.

“I’m always getting cuts on my hands,” replied Rosa. “All I have to do is to hide the rest of me. Margot is pretty busy now, you know. If she hadn’t been she would have heard old Pixley’s story. Can’t that woman talk though?”

Nancy agreed that she could, and that led to further discussion of Mrs. Pixley, Orilla, Mrs. Rigney and some other folks that Nancy had recently become acquainted with.

This was to have been the evening of the dance at Sunset Hotel, but there was now no possibility of the girls attending it. Not only did Rosa’s battered condition make it impossible, but a heavy summer storm had descended upon the mountains, and showed no indications of subsiding.

Rain, wind, thunder, lightning! The girls watched the great spectacle from a west window, and at times it seemed as if the heavens217 were splitting asunder. The lightning flashed in a solid sea of fire behind one great mountain, and this looked indeed as if the sky were rent and another world was breaking through.

Somehow the storm seemed a fitting finish for the turbulent day that Nancy and Rosa had just passed through, and as they watc............