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 fail to appreciate her heroine, but she showed quite plainly that she did not want to hear about her. "All the time I was talking she fidgeted around and looked too unhappy for anything. I guess she needn't think she's the only one in the world that can make people love her. I don't think it's very nice to be jealous of a person you never saw. Pooh! I like what she said about trying to be good. I guess Delia knows," said Nan. They ate their luncheon together in the library, and after they had finished Miss Blake excused herself and went upstairs to prepare to go out. "After being in the house all the morning one needs a change," she said, "and it would be a sin to spend all of this glorious day indoors."