"He's very careful not to say he'll miss me," thought Nancy with childish pique. Then, aloud: "But I can't stay at Happy House forever. I only planned to spend three weeks there at the most and it's been six. And it seems as though I'd been there ages! I suppose one day on the Islands is like a week in the cities, where you live right next to people and never really touch their lives. However, it's in the rush of the cities I belong; I should die if I had to stay here!" She wanted him to understand that the attractions of Happy House could not hold her; she wanted to punish him for that abstraction that she had thought indifference.
"Judson's will be a dull hole without you at Happy House, Nancy," Peter put in, gravely.
She laughed lightly. "By Christmas you will have forgotten all about me! Anyway, you will have Miss Denny."
With wicked delight over his embarrassment Nancy told him of Nonie's plan that Miss Denny should be Mr. Peter's "dearest."
"Your fate is as plain as the nose on my face," she laughed, tantalizingly. "You won't have to cross my palm with silver to know your future, Mr. Hyde! A cottage on the ten-acre piece where you will live happily—ever afterward. As a wedding gift, with my best wishes, I'll give you the Bird's-Nest."
She dodged the drum-stick that Peter threw at her. "You are not at all grateful for the nice fortune I'm giving you," she declared.
"I am, indeed! Though it doesn't seem quite fair for me to make too many plans without consulting Miss Denny, and I've never seen the lady. She may be old and ugly, black—or yellow."
"I'll tell you—if you'll promise not to tell that I've told! She is old and ugly; she's blind in one eye and stutters and limps and has straggly gray hair and——"
"For Heaven's sake, stop! When all my life I've been looking for a girl with brown hair that looks sort of red and freckles—about three thousand of them!"
"Peter!" Nancy sprang precipitously to her feet. "Look—there is a storm coming!"