CHAPTER IVBEARDING THE LION
Nancy Nelson’s hopes ran high. She was going out into a new world—the world of Pinewood Hall. The girls would all be strangers to her there; not one of them would know her history—or, rather, her lack of a history.
But as to the latter, the girl was determined to learn all there was to know about herself before she arrived at Pinewood.
In two hours the train would be in Cincinnati. She had but half an hour—or less—to wait for the train on the other road to Clintondale. But she had studied the time-table and she knew that, by waiting four hours in Cincinnati, she could get another train to her destination.
She was to telegraph back to Miss Prentice when she arrived at Cincinnati. At the same time she was supposed to telegraph ahead to the principal of Pinewood Hall,—Madame Schakael. This had all been arranged beforehand; Nancy had been thoroughly instructed by Miss Prentice.
But the girl had made up her mind not to sendthe dispatch on to Pinewood Hall until she was ready to leave Cincinnati. There should be no telegraphing back and forth between the two schoolmistresses if she could help it.
In the interim Nancy proposed to find Mr. Gordon’s office and have the long-wished-for interview with the man whom she called her guardian. All the guardians she had ever read of seemed to have a much deeper interest in their wards than this lawyer had shown in her.
The cab driver checked her trunk and then spoke a word to the conductor of the train that would take the girl to Cincinnati. But Nancy felt quite independent and “grown up.”
She asked the conductor about stopping over at the big city until the later train and he assured her that she would need no stop-over check for that. She spent a good part of the time until she got to Cincinnati inventing speeches which she would make to Mr. Gordon when she reached his office.
She filed the telegram to Miss Prentice as soon as she got off the train; then she checked her handbag at the parcel counter and walked out of the station.
Of course, she had no idea in which direction South Wall Street lay; but she knew a policeman when she saw one, and believed those minions of the law to be fountains of information.
She told the officer exactly what she wanted to do—to go to the lawyer’s office and return to the station in time for the afternoon train to Clintondale.
“It’s quite a little walk, Miss, and you might get turned around. Suppose I put you into a taxi and take the man’s number, and he can bring you back, if you like?”
Nancy had some few dollars in her pocketbook; but she was careful to have the policeman estimate the cost of her cab-ride, which he kindly did. She would have sufficient to pay for this, and a luncheon, as well, if she got back in season. So the girl bravely entered the taxi-cab and was whirled through the unfamiliar streets to the lawyer’s office.
Then she began to quake. She was to beard a lion in his den—and she knew very little about lions!
Number 714 South Wall Street was a big office building; there were, too, taxis passing all the time; so Nancy paid off her chauffeur and entered the building with more boldness in her carriage than she really felt in her heart.
She was studying the building directory when the hall-man came to her assistance.
“Who are you looking for, Miss?” he asked.
“Mr. Henry Gordon.”
“Gordon? Is that Gordon & Craig, architects?”
“Mr. Gordon is a lawyer.”
“Oh! That’s Mr. Gordon, of Ambrose, Necker & Boles. Twelve-forty-four. This way, Miss. Number 6—going up!”
She was hustled into the elevator with a crowd of other people and the car almost immediately began to ascend.
“Floor! Floor!” the boy who manipulated the lever kept calling, and the passengers began to thin out rapidly after the fourth floor was passed.
“What floor, Miss?” he snapped at her.
“Mr. Gordon,” stammered Nancy, more than a little confused by the rush of it all. “Twelve-forty-four, the—the gentleman said.”
“Twelfth! Here you are!” and the car stopped with a jerk while the boy opened the sliding door with a flourish.
“Forty-four, to the right!” advised the youth, and immediately the car shot up the well out of sight.
The clang of the cage-door echoed through the empty corridor. There were rows of doors, with ground-glass panes, all painted in black or gold with the name of firms, or with the single word, “Private.”
For a minute Nancy hesitated. Somehow, her ears rang and she had to wink fast to keep back the tears. Yet it was merely nervousness. She knew of no reason why she should be frightened.
Surely her guardian must wish to see her! He probably was a very busy man—perhaps a man without a family. Maybe he lived at a hotel where he could not have his ward come to see him. That was why she had had to spend her vacations heretofore at Malden. Nancy thought of these things, and began to take courage.
She glanced along the corridor. “To the right,” the elevator boy had said. She took a few uncertain steps and came opposite Room 1231. Room 1244 must be near.
She persevered, walking almost on tiptoe so as not to awaken the echoes of the lofty corridor, and quickly came before the door numbered 1244. Stenciled upon it was the firm name: “Ambrose, Necker & Boles, Attorneys.”
There was nothing about Mr. Gordon. His name did not appear, and she was not sure now that she had reached the goal.
She turned the knob with a flutter at her heart, and stepped into the office. She found herself immediately in a sort of fenced-off stall, with a glass partition on one hand, through which shesaw many desks and typewriter tables, at which a score of men and girls were busy.
Directly before her, however, was a gate in the railing and beside the gate—and evidently the Cerberus of the way—was a small, thin boy sitting at a small desk, with his legs wound around his chair legs like immature pythons with blue worsted bodies.
He was supposed to be doing something with a pile of papers and long envelopes; but the truth was he had rigged, with rubber bands, a closely-printed, “smootchy” looking paper-backed storybook before him on the desk, so that on the instant Nancy approached, the rubbers snapped the book back under the desk lid out of sight.
He looked up with little, red-lidded eyes, grinning queerly at her.
“Gee!” he gasped under his breath. “I thought it was the boss.” Then aloud he demanded, with hauteur: “Who do you wish to see, lady?”
Now Nancy had not been used to being addressed in so cavalier a manner, and for a moment she did not know how to reply. But in that moment she took a mental picture of the boy that she was not likely to forget.
"What are you doing here? Have you run away?" _Page 39._"What are you doing here? Have you run away?" _Page 39._
Besides being diminutive and fleshless, his features were very small and very, very sharp. The generous hand of Nature had sprinkled freckles across his nose. He had lost a front tooth, which fact made his smile perfectly “open.”
His watery blue eyes twinkled with mischief. His grin wrinkled up his preternaturally old face in a most remarkable way. His shock of hair was flame-colored—and exactly matched the tie he wore.
“Say!” this youngster said. “You’ll know me again; eh? My name’s ‘Scorch’ O’Brien. What’s yours?”
“I—I’m Nancy Nelson,” confessed the girl, but beginning to smile at him now. Hewastoo funny for anything. “And I’ve come to see Mr. Gordon.”
“Not Old Gudgeon? He never had a lady come to see him before,” announced the office boy, explosively. “Sure it’s him you want?”
“Mr. Henry Gordon,” declared Nancy, in some doubt.
“Henery is his front name,” admitted Scorch, rumpling his red top-knot. “But I guess I’d better ask first if he’ll have you in.”
“Just tell him it’s me, please,” said Nancy, faintly.
“What did you say the name was, Miss?”
“Nancy Nelson. He’ll know. I’m his ward.”
“Aw, no! You ain’t?”
“Yes, I am,” said Nancy, nodding.
“Never knowed he had one. So he is yer guardeen?” grunted the red-haired boy, unwinding his legs.
The girl thought she had chatted quite enough with this very bold youth, so made no further reply.
“Ain’t he the sly one?” proceeded “Scorch” O’Brien, shaking his head. “Him a guardeen—an’ I never knowed it before.”
Evidently the fact that anything of such moment had escaped him rasped the temper of the boy. He went off muttering, and came back again, in a minute, grinning.
“Say! he must have robbed you of the estate. It sure scared him when I announced your name. Never seen him turn a hair before; but he wasn’t looking for no ‘Nancy Nelson’ ter come up and confront him like this.”
Nancy, rather offended at this “fresh” youth, swept by him through the gateway and approached the door to which she had seen the flame-haired “Scorch” go in his quest of Mr. Gordon.
Yes! “Mr. Henry Gordon” was painted upon the door. She opened it slowly and looked in.
There was a great, broad table-desk, piled high with books and papers—a veritable wilderness ofbooks and papers. In a broad armchair, with his back to the door, sat “Old Gudgeon,” as “Scorch” had disrespectfully called Mr. Henry Gordon.
He was as broad as his chair. Indeed, he seemed to have been forced into it between the arms, by hydraulic pressure. Nancy did not see how he evercouldget out of it!
He had enormous shoulders, fairly “humped” with layers of fat. His head was thrust forward as he wrote, and his shaven neck was pink, and bare, and overlapped his collar in a most astonishing way.
“Ahem!” said Nancy, clearing her throat a little. She had come inside and closed the door, and it seemed that Mr. Gordon was giving her no attention.
Then she chanced to look up and, on the wall beyond the desk, was a broad mirror tilted so that the lawyer needed but to raise his eyes to see reflected in the glass all that went on behind him.
And in that glass Nancy got her first glimpse of Henry Gordon’s face.
It was really something more than a glimpse. The lawyer was evidently staring at her—had been doing so for some seconds. His great, broad, unwrinkled countenance seemed to have paled on her first appearance, for now the color was washingback into it in a wave of faint pink—a ruddy hue that was natural to so full-bodied a man.
“Come here, girl!”
The voice that rumbled out of Mr. Gordon’s throat was commensurate with his bulk. He slowly turned his chair upon its pivot. Trembling, Nancy made her way across the rug to the corner of his desk.
All of a sudden every bit of courage she had plucked up, was swept away. She felt a queer emptiness within her. And in her throat a lump had risen so big that she could not swallow.
CHAPTER VNANCY’S CURIOUS EXPERIENCE
Mr. Gordon’s eyes were brown. They were heavy-lidded so that Nancy could see very little of their expression. He was a smoothly-shaven man and his thick lips seemed grim.
“You—you are the girl?” demanded the lawyer.
“Yes—yes, sir,” she said. “I’m Nancy Nelson.”
“What are you doing here? Have you run away?” he shot at her, accentuating the query with a pointed forefinger.
Afterward she realized that that impaling index finger was a gesture of habit—it was his way of “spearing” witnesses in court when they were under fire.
“No, sir,” replied Nancy, with more confidence.
“How do you come here, then?”
“I am on my way to Clintondale.”
“Clintondale?”
“Pinewood Hall, you know. There—there is a four-hour wait here at Cincinnati, you know.”
“I didnotknow,” he rumbled forth. Then, like a flash, he demanded: “Who sent you here?”
This question took the last breath of wind out of Nancy’s sails. She had, through it all, believed that he might be glad to see her. But now she realized that the opposite was the truth.
“Nobody sent me,” she stammered.
“Not the woman at the other school—Miss—Miss Prentice?”
“No, sir. She does not know. I—I just wanted to see you.”
“What for?” he asked, in the same sudden, gruff way.
“I—I thought you might want to seeme, too,” she hedged. “You—you know guardians usuallydowant to see their wards.”
“Ha! who told you that I was your guardian?”
“No—no one; but you are, sir?” she questioned, fearfully.
“No, Miss. I am not.”
“Then—then you onlyactfor my guardian?”
He looked straight at her, and steadily, for several moments, without speaking. Nancy could learn nothing from his expression.
“I do not know that, legally speaking or otherwise, you have a guardian,” he finally said.
“But—but——”
“Money passes through my hands for your support and schooling. That is all I can tell you. I amnotyour guardian.”
“Oh, but surely!” cried the greatly perturbed girl, “you know something about me?”
“I know what your teachers have reported. They say you are fairly intelligent, remarkably healthy, and quite obedient.”
“Oh, sir!”
“I considerthisa flagrant case of disobedience. Don’t let it happen again,” pursued Mr. Gordon, sternly.
“But, sir! I cannot help it,” cried poor Nancy, the tears now beginning to flow. “I feel sometimes as though I couldn’tliveunless I learned something about myself—who I am—who my folks were—why I am being educated—who is paying for it, and all——”
“You would better smother your curiosity,” interrupted Mr. Gordon, the fat fingers of one hand playing a noiseless tattoo upon the edge of his desk. “I can tell you nothing.”
“You are forbidden to tell?” gasped the girl.
“I know nothing, therefore I cannot tell. You came to me anonymously—that is, your identity aside from the name you bear was unknown to me. The money which supports you comes to me anonymously.”
“Oh!” The girl’s real pain and disappointment were evident even to the case-hardened lawyer. He was silent while she sobbed with her eyes against her coat-sleeve. But no change of expression came into the face that, for long years, he had trained to hide emotion before juries and witnesses.
“I might have refused the task set me years ago when—when I introduced you into Miss Prentice’s school,” he said, at last. “I might have gone to the authorities and handed you over to them—money and all. To what end? I was assured that no further money would be devoted to your up-keep and education. You would then have had no better chance than that of any foundling in a public charitable institution. Not so nice; eh?”
“Oh!” exclaimed the girl again, looking at him now through her tears.
“So I accepted the responsibility—as I accept many responsibilities in the way of business. It is nothing personal to me. I am paid a certain sum for handling the money devoted to your support. That is all.”
The girl asked a strange question—strange for one so young, at least. The thought had stabbed her like a knife:
“What would you do if I should die? Howwould you tell those—those who send the money?”
If the lawyer hesitated it was but for a moment. And his huge face was a veritable mask.
“I should advertise in the personal column of a certain metropolitan newspaper—that is all,” he declared.
“Then—then I’m just nobody, after all?” sighed the girl, wiping her eyes.
“Why—why—I wouldn’t say that!” and for the first time a little human note came into Mr. Gordon’s voice, and his pink face seemed to become less grim.
“But that’s what Iam—Miss Nobody from Nowhere. I had no friends at Higbee School because of it; I’ll have no standing at Pinewood Hall, either.”
“Nonsense! nonsense!” ejaculated Mr. Gordon, tapping his desk again.
“Girls who have homes—and folks—don’t want to associate with girls who come from nowhere and don’t know anything about themselves.”
“Well, well! That’s a thought that had never entered my mind,” said the lawyer, more to himself than to Nancy.
“You see how it is, sir. I thought there might be an estate, maybe. I thought maybe that, asso much money was being spent for me—I might be of some importance somewhere——”
“Ha!” exclaimed the lawyer, still staring at her.
“But now you say there’s nobody—and nothing. Just money comes—comes out of the air for me. And you pass it on. Oh, dear me! it’s very mysterious, sir.”
He said nothing, but still looked at her.
“And you’re not even my guardian! I hoped when I went to Pinewood and the girls began to get curious, I could talk about you,” confessed Nancy, plaintively. “I thought maybe, if you even weren’t married——”
“Ahem! I amnotmarried,” said the lawyer, quickly.
“But, then, if you were truly my guardian, I might come and see you once—or you could come to the school and see me,” pursued the girl, wistfully. “But now—now there’s nothing—absolutely nothing.”
“Now there’s nothing,” repeated Mr. Gordon, uncompromisingly.
“And the girls at Pinewood Hall will be just like those at Higbee,” sighed Nancy.
“How’s that?” demanded Mr. Gordon.
“They won’t want to associate with me—much. Their mothers won’t let them invite me home.For I am a nobody. I heard one lady tell Miss Prentice once that one never knew what might happen if one allowed one’s girls to associate with girls who had no family. Of course not. I couldn’t blame ’em.”
“Ha!” ejaculated Mr. Gordon again.
“You see, my people might have been dreadful criminals—or something,” went on Nancy. “It might all come out some day,—and then nice people wouldn’t want their girls to have been associated with me.”
“Ha!” repeated the lawyer.
“You see how it is; don’t you?” explained Nancy, softly. “Miss Prentice would not let the girls write home about me. And when they learned last June that I was going to Pinewood they all thought my folks must really be rich. Sothatwas all right.
“But I thought if I could see you, you would tell me all there was to know about myself—and my people; and that maybe I could talk about my guardian and make it all right with those new girls.”
“I’ve told you all I know,” said Mr. Gordon, almost sullenly, it seemed.
“Well, then, I—I guess I’ll be going,” said Nancy, faintly, and turning from the desk. “I—I’m sorry I bothered you, sir.”
“Where are you going?” demanded the lawyer.
“Why—why, to Clintondale, sir.”
“Ha! I’ll make sure that you get on the right train, at any rate,” he said, and pressed a button under the edge of his desk. “Have you had your luncheon?”
“No, sir. Not yet.”
He plucked a ten-dollar note out of his vest pocket and thrust it into her hand. “Get your luncheon.” The door opened and the red-headed boy looked in. “Pay for ‘Scorch’s’ luncheon, too.”
“Ye-es, sir,” said Nancy, faintly.
“Scorch!” commanded Mr. Gordon.
“Yessir!” snapped the office boy.
“It’s about your lunch hour?”
“Yessir!”
“Take—take Miss Nancy Nelson to Arrandale’s. Afterward take her to the station and put her aboard the right train for Clintondale. Understand?”
“Yessir!”
Mr. Gordon wheeled back to his desk. He did not even say good-bye to Nancy as Scorch held the door open for her to pass out.
CHAPTER VITHE UNRIVALED SCORCH
“Say! ain’t Old Gudgeon a good one?” murmured the red-headed boy, as he followed Nancy to the gate.
She did not answer. That lump had come back into her throat and she was industriously swallowing it. It seemed to her just then as though it would never be possible for her to eat luncheon at Arrandale’s,—wherever that might be.
Scorch caught up his cap and hustled her out of the gate, and out of the main office door, and whistled shrilly to an elevator that was just shooting down.
“Come on, Nancy!” he said, with immense patronage. “We’ll have a swell dinner and it takes time to do it. When does your train get away?”
She managed to tell him.
“Golly! we are all right, then. We can talk over the eats, an’ you can tell me your troubles and I’ll relate the story of my life to you—eh?”
The girl tried to smile at him, for she realizedthat his chatter was kept up partly for the purpose of covering her disappointment. But Nancy was no baby-girl; by the time the elevator reached the lower floor of the building she had winked back her tears and the ache had gone out of her throat.
“This way, Nancy,” said her conductor, cheerfully rushing her through the revolving door to the sidewalk. “There’s Arrandale’s over yonder. If I’d known I was going to eat at such a swell place to-day I’d have worn my glad rags—good duds, you know.”
“You—you look all right,” returned Nancy, smiling, for the red-headed boy did indeed have a neat appearance. Somebody took pains to make him spruce when he started for the office in the morning. “I guess you’ve got some folks?” she questioned.
“Sure. My mother scrubs out the offices. That’s how I come by my job. My big sister keeps house for us, an’ the kids are in school. Yes! there’s folks enough belonging to me. But my father is dead.”
“I—I don’t know anything about my father or mother—or any of my folks.”
“No! Don’t old Gordon know?”
“He says not.”
“And he’s your guardeen?”
Nancy was silent for a moment. But she was a perfectly honest girl and she knew she was allowing Scorch to gain a wrong impression.
“He—he isn’t my guardian,” she blurted out as they crossed the street.
“Hey? I thought you said he was!”
“And I thought so, then. This is the first time I ever saw him. He says he is not my guardian and that he doesn’t know anything about me. He only has money sent to him to spend for me.”
“You don’t mean it?” cried Scorch, his eyes twinkling. “That’s like a story; ain’t it? You’re the mysterious heiress who doesn’t know who she is. That’s great!”
“Do you think so?” demanded Nancy, rather warmly. “Well, let me tell you it isn’t nice at all.”
“Why not?” demanded the romance-loving youth.
“Why.... The girls at school think it’s so odd. I’m just Miss Nobody from Nowhere. And they’ve all got folks.”
“Gee!” observed Scorch, getting a new idea of the situation.
They reached the door of the fashionable restaurant and Scorch led the way in with characteristicsang froid. He would have approacheda king or an emperor with perfect ease. Nothing ever “feazed” him, as he was wont to boast.
The head-waiter looked a little askance at the red-headed office boy; but Nancy, in her neat outfit, reassured him, and he led them to a table and drew out the chair for the girl.
“Bring us a couple of time-tables so we can pick our eats,” ordered Scorch.
“Hush!” commanded Nancy, blushing a little. “Other people will hear you.”
“That’s what I talk for,” declared the unabashed boy.
“Well, now you’re going to be a real nice boy while you’re with me; aren’t you? They might take you for my brother, and I wouldn’t want to be ashamed of your manners.”
“That’s a hot one!” observed Scorch, admiringly. “You’re not so slow after all, Nancy.”
“MissNancy, please,” corrected the girl, smiling at him.
“Say! but you are particular.”
“I believe you know how to conduct yourself much better than you appear,” said the girl, looking at him seriously.
“Discovered!” mocked the red-haired one, grinning. “But it’s hard work to be proper.”
“Why?”
“Because of my hair.”
“Your hair?”
“Yep.”
“I don’t see what—what light-colored hair has to do with your manners,” confessed Nancy.
“‘Light-colored’—I like that!” exclaimed Scorch. “Trying to let me down easy—eh?”
“We-ell——”
“It’s red. Say! nobody’s ever let me forget it since I could creep,” declared the boy. “I useter lick all the boys I could at Number Six school, an’ those that I couldn’t lick I throwed stones at. For calling my hair out o’ name, I mean.”
“I suppose being red-headedishard,” commented Nancy.
“Say! bein’ an heiress without no folks ain’t in it with being a carrot-top,” said Scorch, grinning.
“Don’t you think so?”
“The folks in the office began getting fresh right away,” went on the boy, earnestly. “Some of the girls that run the typewriters was as bad as the Willy-boys, too. They’d come up and try warming their hands over my head, an’ all those back-number jokes.
“So I had ter give ’em better than they sent, or they’d have put it all over me. Men that come in to see the boss, or Old Gordon, or the others,see my fiery top-knot, and they try to crack jokes on me. So I have to crack a few.
“So that’s why I act so fresh. Natcherly I’m as tame as though I wore a velvet jacket and curls; it’s just havin’ to defend myself, that’s made me what I am,” declared Scorch, shaking his head, mournfully, as he prepared to eat his soup with much gusto.
“Oh, don’t!” begged Nancy. “Don’t make so much noise.”
“That’s so! I was thinkin’ I was at Joe’s, where I us’lly feeds,” and the boy proceeded to use his spoon with a proper regard for the niceties of the table.
“There! I knew very well you knew how,” said Nancy.
“But it hurts!” exclaimed Scorch, with a wicked grin.
“And that is never your real name?” asked Nancy, after a moment.
“‘Scorch’?”
“Yes. It refers to your hair, I suppose.”
“You’re a clairvoyant, lady,” said the boy. “I gotter real, sure-’nuff name. But I forget it. My mother don’t even remember it any more. But ‘Scorch’ don’t just mean my color. It’s because I’m some scorcher,” proceeded the boy, with pride.
“There weren’t any kids my size or age could outrun me at school—nix! and I won a medal when I worked for the District Telegraph Company. I was the one fast kid that ever rushed flimsies.”
“What’sthat?” demanded Nancy, in wonder.
“Carried telegrams. But I couldn’t stop there. The other kids pounded the life pretty near out of me,” he said, with perfect seriousness.
“Oh! why were they so mean?”
“’Cause I set ’em all a pace that they couldn’t keep up with. So they fired me out of the union, and then the boss fired me because I was always all marred up from fighting the other kids. So I come to work at that law shop.”
Under advice from the knowing Scorch, Nancy had ordered the very nicest little luncheon she had ever eaten. And the boy gave evidence of enjoying it even more than she did.
Indeed, her appetite was soon satisfied; but Scorch kept her answering questions about herself; and soon she found that she was being quite as confidential with this red-headed office boy as she ever had been with anybody in her life.
“Say! did it ever strike you that Old Gordon might be stringing you?” demanded Scorch.
His slang puzzled the girl not a little; but the red-headed one explained:
“Suppose hedidknow all about you and your folks—only he didn’t want to tell?”
“Butwhy?”
“Oh, ain’t you green?” demanded Scorch. “Don’t you see he might be making money out of you? Mebbe there’s a pile of money, and he’s using only a little for you and putting the rest of it in his pocket?”
“Oh, I don’t believe Mr. Gordon would do such an awful thing,” gasped Nancy, shaking her head vigorously.
“Well, they do it to heiresses in stories,” returned Scorch, doggedly. “And worse.”
“But I don’t believe it.”
“That’s all right—that’s all right,” said the boy. “You’re not supposed to believe it. You’re the heroine; they never believe anything but what’s all nice and proper,” urged Scorch. “You lemme alone. I’m goin’ to watch Gordon. If he’s up to something foxy, I’ll find it out. Then I’ll write to you. Say! where’s this jail they’re goin’ to put you in?”
“It’s no jail,” laughed Nancy, immensely amused, after all, by this romantic and slangy youth. “It’s a beautiful school. It’s Pinewood Hall. It’s at Clintondale, on Clinton River. And it’s very select.”
“It’s what?”
“Select. It costs a lot of money to go there. The girls are very nice.”
“All right. You can get a letter, just the same; can’t you?”
“Why—I suppose so. I—I neverdidreceive a letter—not one.”
“All right. You’ll get one from me,” promised Scorch, with assurance. “If I find out anything about Old Gordon that looks like we was on his trail, I’ll let you know.”
“That’s very nice of you,” replied Nancy, demurely, but quite amused. “Now, have you finished, Scorch?”
“Full up,” declared the youngster. “The gangplank’s ashore and we’re ready to sail—if we ain’t overloaded,” and he got up from his chair with apparent difficulty.
Nancy had paid the bill and tipped the waiter. She had a good bit of the ten dollars left to slip back in her pocketbook; but she reserved a crisp dollar-bill where it would be handy.
They had plenty of time to walk to the station, and Nancy was glad to do this. Besides, Scorch declared he needed the exercise.
The red-headed boy was a mixture of good-heartedness and mischievousness that both delighted Nancy and horrified her. He was saucy to policemen, truckmen, and anybody who undertookto treat him carelessly on the street. But he aided his charge very carefully over all the crossings, and once ran back into the middle of the street and held up traffic to pick up an old woman’s parcel.
They came to the station, got Nancy’s bag, and Scorch insisted upon taking her to the very step of the car. When she shook hands with him Nancy had the banknote ready and she left it in his hand.
Before she got up the steps, however, he ran back, pushed aside the brakeman, and reached her.
“Say! you can’t do that,” he gasped, his face as red as his hair.
“Do what?” demanded the girl.
“You can’t tipme. Say! I ain’t the waiter—nor the janitor of the flat. I’m the hero—and the heroine never tips the hero—nix on that!”
The next moment he had thrust the dollar-bill into her hand, jumped down to the platform, and scuttled through the crowd, leaving Nancy with the feeling that she had offended a friend.
CHAPTER VIIFIRST IMPRESSIONS
When the train pulled out of the station Nancy Nelson noticed for the first time that the sky had become overcast and the clouds threatened rain. Scorch O’Brien, the odd new friend she had made, was so sprightly a soul that she really had not observed the change in the weather.
“Oh! I’d like to have a brother like him,” she thought. “I don’t care if heisslangy—and fresh. I guess he wouldn’t be so if—as he says—everybody didn’t try to poke fun at his red hair. And how homely he is!”
She smiled happily over some of Scorch’s sayings and his impish doings; so they were some miles on the journey before she began to look about the car.
Her ticket had called for a chair in the parlor-car; and she immediately discovered that she was not the only girl who seemed to be traveling alone.
At least there were half a dozen girls not far from her own age who were chattering together some distance forward of her seat. When theconductor came along he smiled down upon Nancy and asked, as he punched her ticket:
“You going to Pinewood, too?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Your first term there?”
“Oh, yes, sir.”
“Then you don’t know these other girls?” and he nodded to the group further up the car.
“No, sir. Aretheygoing there, too?” asked Nancy, eagerly.
“Yes. I’ve been carrying a lot of them to Clintondale this week. The Hall opens day after to-morrow. Anybody to meet you, Miss?”
“I telegraphed on from Cincinnati,” said Nancy.
“That’s all right, then. One of the ’bus men will be on the lookout for you.”
“But are those all new girls, too?” asked Nancy, earnestly, as the conductor was about to pass on.
“No. But most of them have been there only one term. That tall girl is named Montgomery. Her father’s a State Senator—guess you’ve heard of Senator Montgomery? Go up and speak to them,” and the conductor passed on.
But Nancy did not have the courage to take his advice. She, however, observed the girls with renewed interest.
The tall one—the Montgomery girl—was very richly dressed, and she seemed to think a good deal of what she wore. She was always arranging her gown, and looking in the glass to see if her hat was on straight—and occasionally Nancy caught her powdering her nose.
There was a black-haired girl, too, with very sharp eyes and a lean face, who laughed whenever the Montgomery girl said anything supposed to be funny, and seemed to ape the Senator’s daughter in other ways, too. The other girls called her “Cora.”
Once Nancy went forward to get a drink of water. She passed the group of her future schoolmates slowly, hoping that some of them would speak to her. But none did, and when she came back down the aisle, the tall girl eyed her with disdain.
Nancy flushed and hurried by; but not too quickly to hear the Montgomery girl say:
“Trying to butt in, I guess.”
The girl called Cora laughed shrilly.
“I guess I’m not going to likethosegirls,” sighed Nancy. And then she shivered as she thought of how mean they might be if they ever found out that she was “Miss Nobody from Nowhere.”
The rain began to slant across the open fieldsand trace a pattern upon the broad, thick, glass beside her so that she could no longer see out. Besides, it was growing dark early.
The train passed through towns that seemed all gloomy, smoky brick buildings, or shanties clinging like goats to the sides of high bluffs. A pall of dun vapor hung over these towns, and the lonely Nancy was glad when the train did not stop.
Sometimes they dashed into a tunnel, and a cloud of stifling smoke wrapped the cars about and the cinders rattled against the ventilators and roof.
On and on swept the train, and at last the brakeman, as they left one station, announced:
“Next stop Clintondale!”
Nancy began to gather her things together and put on her coat long before the train slowed down. Then the other girls got ready leisurely, still chatting.
The rain beat harder against the window. It was after seven o’clock. They passed a block-tower with its lights and semaphore. Then the grinding brakes warned her that her destination was at hand.
The end of the wet platform flashed into view. There were dazzling lights, rumbling hand-trucks, and people running about.
As she came to the door of the car—she did not go out by the one chosen by the Senator’s daughter and her friends—the roar of voices burst upon her ear:
“Clinton Hotel! This way!”
“Pinewood Hall! This is the ’bus for the school! Pinewood Hall!”
“Carriage, Miss! Private carriage, Miss!”
“Pinewood Hall! Pinewood Hall!”
“Clinton House! Come on, here, you that want the hotel.”
“’Bus for Pinewood. That you, Miss Briggs? Going with me? Where’s yer check?”
“This way for the school. Pinewood Hall! Hi, there, Jim! Found that other one? Miss Nelson! Miss Nelson! Who’s seen Miss Nelson?”
Suddenly Nancy realized that the big man in front of her was roaring her name in stentorian tones.
“Oh, oh!” she gasped. “I’mMiss Nelson.”
“All right. Here she is, Jim! Right this way to the ’bus. Where’s your check, Miss? All right. Have the trunk and bag up some time to-night—if they are here.”
“They should have come on the earlier train,” explained Nancy.
“All right. Then you’ll git ’em on this load.There’s the ’bus, Miss. Yes! there’s room for you in there.”
The omnibus was backed up against the platform under the hood of the station. There was a crowd of laughing, chattering girls before her in the vehicle.
“Now, Jim! you can’t put another livin’ soul in this ’bus—you know you can’t,” cried one, to the driver.
“Boss says so, Miss,” growled Jim.
“What do you think we are—sardines? Oh! my foot!” shrieked another girl.
“And she’s a greeny, too. Any of you ever see her before?” demanded one of the girls nearest the half-closed door.
“Say! what’s your name?” asked another girl, leaning out to speak to Nancy.
Nancy told her.
“She’s green—what did I tell you? And we’re all sophs here. Say, Freshie! don’t you know you don’t belong in here?”
“She’ll have to ride with you, Jim, on the front seat.”
“Now! you know what the Madame would say tothat, Miss,” growled Jim.
“Here!” interposed Nancy herself. “I don’t want to ride with you any more than you seem to want me. But it’s raining, and I don’t proposeto get wet,” and she sturdily shouldered her way past the driver and into the ’bus between the knees of the girls on either hand.
“I can stand,” she said, grimly.
“But don’t stand on my foot, please, Miss!” snapped a girl she was crowding. “Haven’t you any feet of your own?”
“Oh, cracky, Bertha! you know she’s got to stand somewhere. And your feet——”
“Ouch! who areyoushoving?”
“Step forward, please!”
“Plenty of room up front!”
“Why, Belle Macdonald’s piled her bags up in the corner and has gone to sleep on ’em!” shrieked somebody from ahead, as the ’bus lurched forward.
Nancy was confused, hurt, and ashamed. The horse splashed through the puddles and the ’bus plunged and shook over the cobbles.
There were few street lights, and such as there were were dim and wavering in the mist and falling rain. She could see nothing of Clintondale, except that huge trees lined the streets.
The girls were cross, or loud. Not one spoke to her kindly. She was shaken about by the ’bus, and scolded by those whom she was forced to trample upon when she lost her footing.
The new girl from Higbee was much depressed.All her pride and satisfaction in being sent to such a popular school as Pinewood had oozed away.
Her experience with Mr. Gordon added to her unhappiness. She had learned nothing by going to him. He had even called her disobedient.
If these girls were a sample of Pinewood Hall pupils, Nancy knew that she had a hard row to hoe ahead of her. And she had not liked the appearance of those other girls in the train, either.
It was a hopeless outlook. She would have cried—only she was ashamed to do so in the sight of these sharp-tongued, quarreling sophomores. Poor Nancy Nelson’s introduction to Pinewood Hall seemed a most unfortunate one.