Page:Wiggin--Mother Carey's chickens.djvu/190

 The first interview, purely a casual one, took place on the edge of the lily pond where Olive was sketching frogs, and where Nancy went for cat-o'-nine-tails. It proved to be a long and intimate talk, and when Mrs. Carey looked out of her bedroom window just before supper she saw, at the pasture bars, the two girls with their arms round each other and their cheeks close together. Nancy's curly chestnut crop shone in the sun, and Olive's thick black plaits looked blacker by contrast. Suddenly she flung her arms round Nancy's neck, and with a sob darted under the bars and across the fields without a backward glance.

A few moments later Nancy entered her mother's room, her arms filled with treasures from the woods and fields. "Oh, Motherdy!" she cried, laying down her flowers and taking off her hat. "I've found such a friend; a real understanding friend; and it's the girl from the House of Lords. She's wonderful! More wonderful than anybody we've ever seen anywhere, and she draws better than the teacher in Charlestown! She's older than I am, but so tiny and sad and shy that she seems like a child. Oh, mother, there's always so much spare room in your heart,—for you took in Julia and yet we never felt the difference,—won't you make a