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the coffee-pot on the range. Nan tossed her head scornfully. "Well, I like that! I should think you'd be ashamed! A perfect stranger like her!" Delia did not answer. She was crushing ice for the olives, and as Nan spoke she bent her face over the table and pounded away in silence. But when she had finished, she lifted her head and said, amiably: "Oh, you can't tell. By the looks of her I should think she is a good-natured little body. She has the true eyes. When you see eyes like that you can mostly be sure they've an honest soul behind 'em. I shouldn't wonder if she'd be a good friend to any one who'd let her." "Huh!" sneered Nan, wrathfully, "that means, I s'pose, that you intend to let her. Never talk to me of turn-coats any more, Delia Connor!" Delia caught up a coal-hod and strode deliberately off toward the cellar stairs. When she came back she was laden down with kindlings and coal. "What you going to do with those?" demanded Nan, imperatively. "Build a fire in the library. I guess a spark'll look good to the poor little soul--coming in out of the cold and wet." This was the last straw. Nan's eyes flashed, and she tore after Delia upstairs, scolding as fast as the words would come. "The idea! The idea! A fire! 'Poor little soul!' And many's the time I've come in out of the cold and you haven't even as much as lit the gas! Oh, no; never mind me! I can come in out of the cold till every tooth in my head chatters, and you wouldn't care a straw. Why, Delia Connor, we never have that fire lit. You just know we don't! There hasn't been a fire in that grate since daddy went away! You know very well there hasn't, and now the first thing you do is to light it for that horrid governess-woman that's going to boss you 'round like anything, and make me do all sorts of hateful things. I tell you what it is, Delia Connor, you don't care a single thing about me. I know just how 'twill be. You'll help her to do anything she wants to, and you'll never stand up for me a bit. It's mean of you, Delia! It's downright mean of you. And it's just because she's got those dimples and things, and smiles at you as if you were her best friend. But she needn't think she can manage me. I'm not going to be ordered about by her, if she has got a soft voice and shiny eyes!" Nan and the fire sputtered and blazed as though they were trying to see which could outdo the other, and Delia stood by looking
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