She returned soberly home and deliberately sought out Mary Lee and the boys whom she found practicing the double shuffle on the back porch.
"Where have you been?" asked Ran, pleasantly.
"In the enchanted woods," returned Nan, "but it was getting gruesome there so I came away."
Ran laughed. He was getting used to these speeches from Nan, and rather liked them.
"I can do it now," said Mary Lee eagerly. "I got Mitty to show me. See, Nan." And she executed the step easily.
"I don't know that step, but I know another one," said Nan, glad to perceive that her ill temper of the morning was forgotten, and being a little ashamed of supposing that they would miss her much when she went off alone.
The noise of their break-downs brought Aunt Sarah to the door. "What in the world are you all doing?" she asked.
"Just doing some steps," replied Mary Lee, expertly executing her double shuffle.
"You might have been better employed," returned Aunt Sarah. "It would have been just as well, Mary Lee, if you had been giving some attention to darning your stockings. There is a fine large hole in the knee of one where you scraped it against a tree you were climbing, I suppose. And, Nan, it wouldn't do any harm if you were to see where you left the shirt-waist you took off this morning. We are not Japanese to hang up things on the floor."
"I wish we were," answered Nan. "I'd like to wear kimonos and shoes that slip up and down at the heel, and I'd not mind living in a house made of paper screens."
"Poor protection they'd be to you," replied Aunt Sarah, "for you would punch a hole in every one before a day was over."
Nan was not destructive and considered this an unjust imputation, so she stalked off with her head in the air. She didn't believe but that she had hung up the shirt-waist and that it had slipped down. Aunt Sarah was so particular and was always dinging at her about leaving bureau drawers and closet doors unclosed. When one is in a hurry, how is it possible always to see that everything is just so?
She found the waist not on the floor of the closet, but by the chair where she had laid her clothes the night before. There were some of Jack's belongings, too, strewed around the room, but Mary Lee's and Jean's were carefully put away. Nan hung up the waist and then sat down by the window. Suppose the things in the big house at Uplands had been allowed to lie around helter-skelter, she didn't believe it would look so attractive as she imagined. This brought a new train of thought which she carried out, leaning her arms on the sill, her chin resting upon them till Aunt Sarah's entrance aroused her from her reverie.