CHAPTER XXIII SHEDDING SECRETS

Orilla was now moving about the room in such an excited manner that Nancy became alarmed!

“Come on out, Orilla,” she begged. “I really have stayed too long. Rosa will be back—”

“All right. Let’s go. But I want to tell you that I broke the fern stand—Mrs. Betty’s, you know,” Orilla said, her voice raising beyond the pitch of security. “I came back that night—mother was to be away a week and I came up here for that one night—and I had forgotten my key. I was so mad to have to go back home all alone and it was late, you know, that I just Smashed that fancy stand for revenge!”

“Orilla! That lovely fernery!” gasped Nancy.

258 “Yes, I know it does seem cowardly,” admitted the girl, “but my head was splitting—”

“You have a headache now,” interrupted Nancy, noting again the girl’s highly flushed face.

“Yes, and I must go,” she cast a lingering look about the room, which really was quite cozy. “How I would love to be able to come in here and fix things up,” she sighed.

Nancy was thinking of a possible plan, but she had no time to mention it now. She wanted to get outside and find Rosa.

“Of course I’m going to tell Rosa,” she said, making sure of speaking positively so that Orilla would not expect to object.

“I suppose you can. I am so tired of secrets that I was determined to tell you before my old crankiness would come over me again,” confessed Orilla. She had locked the door and again they were treading their way under the wild grape-vine tunnel. “I don’t know why it is that some people can soothe one so. I should never have thought of confiding in anyone259 else, and yet you’re just a little girl,” reasoned Orilla wonderingly.

“Maybe that’s it,” replied Nancy brightly. “Because I’m little—”

“Oh, no. That isn’t all of it, but you wouldn’t care for soft soap,” said Orilla wistfully.

“I’m sure I hear Rosa—”

“But I must go, Nancy. My head is bursting, and if I get talking to Rosa, she’ll say so much—”

“You know she has been looking for you all day,” persisted Nancy, anxiously.

“I can’t help it. Everything has got to wait—until to-morrow. Tell her I’ll be here in the morning—if I’m able—”

“Orilla, I can’t let you go,” interposed Nancy. “I’m afraid you’re sick—”

“No, I’m not, really. I have these headaches often, and bringing you into my room, you see—”

“Yes, I understand,” said Nancy kindly. “And if you feel that perhaps, as you say, you had better get quiet. All right; I’ll tell Rosa.260 Don’t worry that she’ll find fault; she always speaks well of you, Orilla.”

“Yes, little Rosa’s all right, but silly. She was so ashamed of being fat—why—” and a little laugh escaped Orilla’s lips. “Wasn’t she foolish?”

Nancy heard voices from the roadway just as Orilla slipped into her boat and paddled off. Finding the secret room had been such a sudden revelation that Nancy could scarcely understand it all even yet. That Orilla should have so loved that room, and that she had been coming to it secretly for so long a time, seemed incredible.

“Uncle Frederic would have let her have it, I’m sure,” Nancy reasoned, “and I’m going to ask him to,” she determined, when the unmistakable voice of Rosa floated in through the hedge.

It was going to be exciting, Nancy knew, this news to Rosa. It would surely be met with one of Rosa’s typical outbursts, so she decided to postpone the telling until Rosa was safely, if not quietly, indoors.

261 “Drydens want us to come to their hotel some night,” Rosa reported, “and we must go. Nancy, they think I’m thin enough. What do you think of that?” and Rosa took a look in the mirror to help Nancy’s answer.

“Calm yourself, Rosa,” said Nancy importantly. “I’ve got such news—”

“Orilla been here?”

“Yes—”

“And she’s gone? Why didn’t you chain her till I came—”

“I couldn’t, Rosa, she had a dreadful headache—”

“Headache! What’s that to the trouble I’ve got? Her troubles, I mean,” and Rosa fell into a chair as if in despair.

“Do let me tell you, Rosa. I feel a little done up myself.”

“Selfish me, as usual. Go ahead, Coz. I’ve got my fingers crossed and am gripping both arms of the chair. No, that’s a physical impossibility; but I’ve got my feet crossed, so it’s all the same. Now please—tell!”

“Did you have any idea that Orilla came to262 her room here, in this house?” Nancy began in her direct way.

“Her room? In this house? What do you mean? She hasn’t any room here!”

“I mean the room she had before Betty came—”

“That little first floor corner—”

“Yes, behind the storeroom, down by the west wing—”

“I knew there was a corner of the house there, but it’s been shut up for ages,” replied Rosa, already showing her eagerness to hear all of the story.

“Well, poor Orilla could never give up that room, and she has been coming to it every chance she got. She took me in there to-night and I never saw anything so pathetic,” explained Nancy simply. “She fairly loves the room and insists that it should still be hers.”

“Can you—beat—that!” Rosa was so surprised no other wording seemed strong enough for her. “Coming to that little cubby-hole!263 Say, Nancy, honestly, do you think that Orilla’s crazy?”

“No, I don’t. But I’ve heard mother tell of such cases. And I’ve read about girls keeping their baby loves, old dolls, you know, and things like that. But this is the oddest—”

“For mercy sakes! How ever did she manage it?” Rosa asked, blinking hard to see through the surprising tale.

Then Nancy told her, as well as she could, how Orilla came by the elderberry path, from the lake, through the maze of wild grape vines to the small door of the small porch at the west end of the big rambling house.

“I always said,” put in Rosa, “that there was a door for each servant around this house, but I must have missed that one. Well, poor old Orilla! I guess she’s quite a wreck, isn’t she?”

“She had a headache, as I told you, but she seemed glad to get rid of some of her secrets, and I don’t wonder,” admitted Nancy. “She has enough secrets to make a book. But I told her I wasn’t going to keep any more of264 them. I told her I was going to tell you everything she told me.”

“Goody for you!” chanted Rosa. “And go ahead—tell.”

“Well, she asked me not to tell you when she had been here one night,” began Nancy, taking another chair for a fresh start in the narrative. “I didn’t then, as it couldn’t make much difference—”

“She came sneaking in here—”

“She came through the hall the night the things came from Boston,” went on Nancy. “And I might just as well tell you all about it.”

“All?”

“Yes. I was standing right over there trying on the blue cape—”

“Nancy! You liked that cape!”

“Yes, but I like the red one—”

“You don’t. I know now. That cape was intended for you and I’m a greedy thing to have grabbed it. Of course, you wouldn’t even hint—”

Nancy was a little confused now. She had265 never expected the blue cape issue to come up again. But Rosa was positive and would not listen to Nancy’s protests.

“But, Rosa,” Nancy insisted, “Betty said she would love to get things for you if you would only let her. And surely, when you admired the cape—”

“Oh, yes, I know. You being Nancy, and all that,” said Rosa, meaningly. “Well, I’ll forgive you. You did succeed in getting me to listen to reason and now I’ll try to be civil to Betty.”

“You would have been, anyhow,” said Nancy. “Because you were bound to be more reasonable—”

“I’m not trying to compliment you, little dear, so don’t try so desperately hard to shut me off. But all the same, look—look at my figger! Ain’t it just grand!” and Rosa strutted again before the patient mirror making sure doubly sure that she was quite genteel.

“I suppose you’ll think I’m complimenting you if I tell you how well you look,” retorted266 Nancy. “But I’m sure you have gone down twenty pounds!”

“And a half,” flashed Rosa. “Twenty and one-half pounds less, and my clothes are falling off me. Won’t dad and Betty howl?”

“But you’ve got to keep up your walking, your tennis and non-candy schedule,” Nancy reminded her. “Don’t forget that. All right, don’t answer, please, I have heaps more to tell you about Orilla and we’re miles off the track.”

“My turn. I’ve get to tell now; you listen. First about the blue cape. You’ve got to have that. No, don’t object,” as Nancy seemed about to do so. “I feel like a thief now. To have taken that from you,” declared Rosa.

“I wish you would keep it. Just to show Betty how you liked her choice,” Nancy argued.

“I won’t. I care more about your choice. Besides, I can wear something else she bought, so don’t worry. But about Orilla. You said she had let down the bars on all secrets? That we can tell?”

“Yes, she agreed I could,” replied Nancy.

267 “Then that’s good enough for me,” decided Rosa. “Now you sit pretty and listen, but don’t faint. The reason I tried so desperately hard to find her to-day was because I had a message from Boston for her. Her fresh air kids are arriving to-morrow,” said Rosa facetiously, drawing a funny face.

“Fresh air—children!” corrected Nancy. “What does that mean?”

“It means that the wily Orilla has made arrangements to entertain some poor children and their caretaker at a camp that she hasn’t got. She thought she would have it—I suppose that was what I was chopping down trees for—but the camp doesn’t seem to have developed. And those children leave Boston early in the morning!”

“Do you mean that Orilla agreed to take children at a camp out here and now they are coming—”

“Exactly. And the camp isn’t. That’s the little fix I’m in.”

“You’re in?”

“Yep. I got her mail and it came here in268 my name. It didn’t seem much to do for her, but I’d like to know how I’m going to forestall those children, who will leave their humble homes with their breakfasts in shoe boxes to-morrow morning.”

Rosa’s mood was happy and her expressions flippant, but for all that Nancy knew she intended no disrespect to the strange children.

“You mean they expect to come to Fernlode?” Nancy queried, puzzled anew.

“They seem to; although, land knows, I didn’t expect them to. You see, Orilla couldn’t give up the idea of this being her headquarters and I, poor dumb-bell, just helped her carry it along.”

“Well, there’s no harm done,” said Nancy calmly.

“No harm done! Wait till I get you to read that telegram. There, read it and—rejoice!”

Nancy read the message. It stated that the children, a dozen of them, would arrive at Craggy Bluff on the morning train and directed the recipient of the message to be sure to meet them with cars!

269 “Oh,” said Nancy. “That is rather complicated, isn’t it, for it’s addressed to you?”

“Bet your life it is,” flashed Rosa. “And please tell me quickly, pretty maiden, and all that, what’s a girl to do about it?”

“You don’t suppose Orilla has the camp ready?”

“I know she hasn’t. She sent message after message, or I did for her, to keep them back. But now they’re coming to-morrow!”

“Then, let them come, that’s all,” said Nancy.

“Yes, just like that,” Rosa continued to joke.

“We can take care of them. It will be fun.”

“We can?”

“Certainly. Why not? They’re just like any other children. In fact, mother thinks they’re always more natural and interesting when they come to the library.”

Rosa simply stared. Her big blue eyes were indeed lovely now in her pretty round face, which had lost the flesh which before had all but disfigured it. Her “figger,” as she270 termed her form, was also much more shapely than it had been in early summer, for magical as the result of her simple new living rules really were, there was no denying its reality. Nancy was watching her now with undisguised admiration.

“Yes,” she repeated, “it will be fun, and we can get Durand’s car—”

“Oh, Nancy, I know!” almost screamed Rosa, “we’ll have them here and say they were entertained by Betty, by Mrs. Frederic Fernell! Betty adores that sort of thing and why shouldn’t we do it?”

“We’ll have to, I guess,” said Nancy dryly, “so just come along and prepare Margot.”