Page:Caroline Lockhart--The full of the Moon.djvu/158

 "It was good of you both to include me."

"Aw, say you'll come?" Ben urged uneasily.

"Yes, I will, if you don't mind waiting," Nan replied in quick decision. And added laughingly: "It will be a lark, won't it?"

"I thought you wouldn't mind even if it did seem like second choice." Edith gave a nervous little laugh. She was not accustomed to being mean; but jealousy has a way of forming acids in the sweetest natures.

"Not at all, so long as it only seems so." Nan was still able to smile.

Nan had in her nature a great deal of something very like chivalry, a masculine sense of justice, a desire to be fair, and this quality would have prevailed in all her intercourse with Edith had not the girl so frankly shown her claws.

Ben was not too astute, but it required little discernment to see that Edith was making more of their appearance together than the occasion warranted. Even while it made him uncomfortable, his vanity was flattered by it and, as always in Edith's society, he had an exalted sense of importance.