“Why not try _my_ cure?” she urged. “It’s not near as unpleasant as Orilla’s.”
“Very well,” Rosa would sigh. “But you better tip off the scales. If they don’t mark me low--”
“They will,” Nancy promised, and of course they always did.
Gar proposed tennis. Rosa had never before played--“good reason why,” she explained, but now she was anxious to try the splendid summer game.
“You look wonderful in your sport suit, Rosa,” Nancy encouraged, “and out on the courts--”
“All right. Anything once, but don’t expect me to fly up in the air after the ball, the way you do, Nance. I’m still something of a paper weight, you know.”
“I know what was the matter with you, Rosa,” her cousin told her one afternoon after an especially enjoyable set with Paul and Gar, “you thought you were fat, and so you were self-conscious and miserable. Now you think you aren’t very fat, and you’re proud.”
“I think I’m not! I am not, am I Nancy? Tell me quickly! End this ‘crool’ suspense--” and Rosa performed a wonderful stunt with tennis racket and ball, actually “flying” off her feet in a really creditable manner.
She was so happy! No one who has always been free from such an insistent worry as Rosa’s had been, can actually understand the joy of hope that a few pounds less flesh can bring. The hand of that little white scale became a friend, an understanding friend, and every time it pointed to a figure Rosa held her breath.
But this did not solve the mystery built around Orilla. Rosa herself was as keenly interested in that as was Nancy, in spite of her rescue from any actual need of it. Bit by bit she confided in Nancy details of the queer bargain between her and Orilla. She had shared her allowance with her, who insisted she had a right to some of it anyway, and that she would not “make Rosa as thin as herself” if she didn’t pay well for it.
“But what has she done with the money?” Nancy asked, after that admission.
“Oh, I don’t know,” replied Rosa, innocently. “You see, she had some big project in her mind and everything else she could get was supposed to go toward it.”
One evening when Nancy was seeking a little solitude along the lake front, there to read again her latest letter from her mother and the latest “funny page” from Ted, she was startled by someone calling her name in a hushed, whispering voice.