ll the time till, Delia says, it was a caution. My grandfather wasn't
very well off, and lots and lots of times my mother wouldn't have been
able to go to the parties she was invited to, if it hadn't been for
that friend of hers, who used to give her the most beautiful
things--dresses, and gloves, and all she needed. She had loads of
money, and every time she got anything for herself she got its mate for
my mother. Don't you think that was pretty generous?"

Miss Blake bit her lip. "One can't judge, Nan," she said. "If your
mother shared her home with this girl and she had money and your mother
had not, I think it was only right that they should share the money
too. No, I do not think it was generous."

Nan tossed her head. "Well, I think it was and so does Delia," she
retorted hotly.

"It is easy enough to give when one has plenty," pursued the governess,
almost sternly. "But when one has little and one gives that--well,
then it is hard and then perhaps one may be what the world calls
generous, though I should call it merely grateful."

Nan did not understand very clearly. She thought Miss Blake meant to
disparage her mother's friend, the woman she had been brought up to
think was one of the noblest beings on earth. She felt angry and hurt
and almost regretted that she had confided the story to her since she
made so little of her heroine's conduct.

"I don't care; I think she was perfectly fine and so does Delia. My
mother just loved her and I guess she knew whether she was generous or
not. When she went away my mother was wild. She cried her eyes out.
But she married my father soon after that, and then--well, my
grandmother died and then my grandfather, and I was born and my mother
died and--O dear me! it was dreadful. Delia says many and many a time
she has gone down on her knees and just prayed that that girl would
come back, but she has never come and she won't now, because it is
years and years ago and maybe she's dead herself by this time. Do you
think Delia would have prayed for Miss Severance to come back if she
hadn't been the best and most generous girl in the world?"

Miss Blake smiled faintly. "That settles it, Nan!" she declared. "If
Delia wanted her back she must at least have tried to be good. And
even trying is something, isn't it? And now, how do you think luncheon
would taste?"

Nan was more than ever inclined to be sulky. Her loyalty was touched.
Not alone did Miss Blake f