, consolingly, but with an effort
and a sigh. "She ain't always like this. She's sorter upset just now.
She don't mean any harm, and she'll be sorry enough for what she's done
come lunchtime. Now, you see."

"But I don't understand," Miss Blake cried. "She said you listened and
that you told me, and that we were both making fun of her. She thinks
we are in league against her. What can she mean? Why, I was only
repeating some nonsense she said in her sleep last night, and I thought
she would be amused to hear an account of it. She came into my room
and orated in the most tragic fashion. What does she mean by saying
you listened and told me?"

Delia shook her head. What she privately thought on the subject she
would not have told Miss Blake for worlds.

"If you take my advice," she ventured, "you won't mind what Nan says.
She's quick as a flash, but she's got a good, big heart of her own, and
it's in the right place, too. Just let her be."

"Let her be?" interrupted Miss Blake, hastily, "not if this is the way
she is going to be. That is not what I am here for. I am here to
educate her, Delia, and I intend to do it."

Delia could see that she meant what she said. There was a determined
expression about her mouth that would have surprised Nan if she had
seen it. But at noon, when she returned, the governess' face was as
placid as ever. She and Delia were discussing the price of butter in
the most intimate fashion possible, and Nan snorted audibly as she
heard them agree that it was ruinously high.

Delia had played a poor enough part before, "kow-towing" to the enemy
the first thing, but now she had deliberately betrayed her--Nan. Had
"gone back on her" in the most flagrant fashion. It was the meanest
thing she had ever heard of and she'd pay Delia back, you see if she
wouldn't! To listen at key-holes and then go and tell-tale!

"Have you had a pleasant morning?" Miss Blake asked, affably, as Nan
entered the room.

She got a grudging affirmative, but nothing daunted she continued: "It
is so cold now there ought to be good skating. Perhaps you and I can
take a spin some day. Do you skate?"

Again Nan answered "Yes," but this time there was a gleam of interest
in her tone.

"When my trunk comes I must show you my skates. I think them
particularly fine: altogether too fine for one who skates as
indifferently well as I do. I am sure you will prove a much better
skater than I am. Somehow I f