Presently there was a tap at the door, then Margot entered.
“The Durand’s are here--but you mustn’t think of going out, Rosa--”
“I’m going!” threatened the girl with the bandaged ankle, again up “in arms.”
As if to make positive that she intended to do exactly as she pleased, especially if the doing of it were opposed by the anxious Margot, Rosa rushed to dress.
“I’ve been in long enough,” she assured Nancy, “I’d die if I were cooped up here any longer. I phoned Gar, told him the doctor said I had to go out--”
“Rosa!” Nancy’s manner showed more disappointment than shock.
“Now, Nannily, don’t go getting excited. My ankle wasn’t bad, really. It was just fun to have a lot of attention. You have no idea how precious little of it I get, usually.”
Nancy sighed. Her own vivid personality felt eclipsed beside the turbulent, changeable cousin. She, Nancy, simply had to be polite and accept things as Rosa offered them, but with each new turn she found herself more and more baffled. Even if she were company and had to appear pleased with things, she was feeling rather tired of Rosa’s whims. They weren’t funny at all; not half so funny as just anything that Ted would do. But why think of Ted now? He was having a fine time with boys at a boys’ camp, and Nancy was wishing she had gone to a girls’ camp with Ruth Ashley.
“What are you going to put on?” asked Rosa very casually, too casually to be taken as Rosa tried to make it.
“I’m not going to change,” replied Nancy. “I’m not going out.”
“Not going out!” exclaimed Rosa, as if such a contingency had never occurred to her. “Why, Nancy _I’m_ going.”
“But _I_ want you to come,” Rosa’s voice was a key higher.
Following that surprising statement Rosa rushed around, tossing helpless garments from one end of the room to another, as if taking her spite out on them. She wasn’t saying a word to Nancy; Nancy wasn’t saying a word to her.
Presently Margot came in for the trays, and as she gathered things up she made known her disapproval of Rosa’s conduct.
“I don’t like to scold, Rosalind, when your cousin has just come, and your father is leaving--”
“Oh, go ahead and scold, Maggie,” said Rosa impertinently. “Get it out of your system. Your eyes look bulgy and--”