The Squire went away vaguely dissatisfied with himself, but took comfort in the thought that women didn't understand these things.

CHAPTER II

JOAN AND NANCY

"My sweet old Joan, tell me all about it."

Joan buried her fair head in Virginia's skirts and burst into tears.

She was sitting on the rug in front of the fire by Virginia's side, in the gloaming.

Virginia put her slim hand on to her shoulder, and caressed her lightly. "It's too bad," she said gently, with her soft, hardly distinguishable American intonation.

"I'm such a fool," said Joan. "I don't know what I want. I don't want anything."

She dried her eyes, but still kept her head on Virginia's knee, and put up her hand to give Virginia's a little squeeze. It was comforting to be with her, looking into the fire.

"It's about John Spence, isn't it, dear?" Virginia asked.

"I'm a fool," said Joan again. "I don't like him as much as I used to."

"Is that why you're a fool?" asked Virginia with a little laugh.

"No," said Joan seriously. "For caring about things changing, because one is grown up. I used to think it would be nothing but bliss to be grown up. Now I wish Nancy and I were little girls again. We used to be very happy together. We always talked about everything, it didn't matter what it was."

"And now you don't. You don't talk about John Spence."

Joan's tears flowed afresh. "I don't want to talk about it, Virginia,"

she said. "I am sure you would never understand what I feel. Whatever I said you would think I meant something else; and I don't a bit. I don't mind his liking Nancy best. I don't want him to like me more than he does."

"Oh, my darling girl! I think I understand it all better than you do yourself. You are unhappy, and you don't know why."

"Then tell me why."

"Well, to begin with, you are just a little jealous."

"Oh, Virginia! And you said you understood!"

"You are jealous, just as you would be if d.i.c.k were suddenly to show that he liked Nancy better than you."

"We used to have such fun together, all three of us. It never entered the heads of either of us to think which he liked the best. He liked us both just the same. Why couldn't it go on like that? I've done nothing. It was after I came back from that horrid Brummels. He didn't like my going there--not that it had anything to do with him.

He was just like father about it, and tried to make out that it had altered me. It hadn't altered me at all. I was just the same as I had always been. It was he that had altered."

"Can't you see, little girl, that it couldn't always go on as it used to?"

"Why not?"

"How can a man fall in love with two girls at once? He must choose one of them, or neither."

"I didn't want him to fall in love with me," said Joan quickly. "I am not in love with him. That's why it's so difficult to say anything.

If I'm unhappy, it looks as if I must be."

"Not to me, dearest Joan. But you can be jealous about people without being in love with them. You know, darling, I think John Spence was almost bound to fall in love with one of you almost directly you grew up. I should have been very much surprised if he hadn't. But I could never tell which it would be. It was just as it happened to turn out.

He came here when you were away, and that just turned the scale. After that it couldn't possibly be as it had been before, when you were both children; not even if you had behaved well about it."

"What!" exclaimed Joan, sitting up sharply.

Virginia smiled, and drew her back to her. "You haven't been kind to Nancy, you know," she said.

Joan did not resist her, but said rather stiffly, "It's she who hasn't been kind to me."

"How?"

"She has said nothing to me. I don't know even what she thinks about it all. If you say I am jealous, that is what I am jealous about. I don't even know that he _is_ in love with her; and if he is, whether she knows it. She acts _exactly_ as we always used to with him, and as I did, until I saw he didn't want me to."

"And then you became offended, and rather ostentatiously left them together whenever he came on the scene."

"Well, if he wanted Nancy, and didn't want me, I wasn't going to push myself forward."

"Poor John Spence!" said Virginia. "He is very disturbed about you. I think he is very much in love with Nancy. It has become plain even to my obtuse old d.i.c.k now. But he might so easily have been very much in love with you, instead, that it troubles his dear simple candid old soul to think you have so changed. As far as he is concerned, he would like nothing better than to be on the old terms with you. He wouldn't like you any the less because he likes Nancy more."

"It is Nancy I am thinking of," said Joan after a pause. "She always has been just a little hard, and she is hard without a doubt now.

Fancy, Virginia--somebody being in love with her, and showing it, and her never saying one single word to me about it! Talking about anything else, but never about the only thing that she must be thinking about!"

"Don't you think she may be thinking you just a little hard?

Fancy--somebody being in love with her, and showing it, and Joan not saying a word to her about it! Talking about anything else, but never the one thing!"

Joan put her handkerchief to her eyes. "If it hadn't begun as it did I should have done everything I could to please her," she said. "I should have been just as interested and perhaps excited about it, for her sake, as she could have been herself. She could have told me everything she was feeling, and now she tells me nothing. I suppose when he has proposed to her, if he does, she will tell me, just as she might tell me if anybody had asked her the time; and then she will ask me what I am going to wear. Oh, everything ought to be different between us just now."

"Yes, it ought," said Virginia. "Dear Joan, you and Nancy mustn't go on like this. I don't think Nancy is hard; I am sure she isn't in this case. She must be feeling it--not to be able to talk to you."

"If I thought that!"

"Darling, you know her so well--almost as well as you know yourself.

Can't you see that it must be so? Can't you make it easy for her to talk to you? It would do away with your own unhappiness. It is that that you are really unhappy about. Life is changing all about you.

You are a child no longer, and you have nothing to put in the place of what you are losing. You are feeling lonely, and out of it all. Isn't that it?"

"Yes, I suppose that is it. It used to be so jolly only a very short time ago--when Frank was home in the summer. Now Kencote doesn't seem like the same place. I should like to go away."

"You wouldn't feel the change so much if you and Nancy were what you have always been to each other. Joan dear, it is for you to take the first step. Show Nancy that you, of all people, are the most pleased at the happiness that is coming to her. I am quite sure she will respond."

Joan's tears came again. "I don't think she wants me now," she said.

"She has somebody else, and I have n.o.body. At least, I have you--and mother. But Nancy and I have been almost like one person."

"She does want you, Joan. She must want you, just as much as you want her. But she won't say so unless you give her the chance."

"Dear old Nancy!" said Joan softly. "I have been rather a pig to her.