CHAPTER XION CLINTON RIVER
This was not the only unpleasant discussion Nancy Nelson had with her ill-tempered roommate. But it was one of those that hurt Nancy the most.
Whenever Cora hinted at the other girl’s lack of friends and relatives—at the mystery which seemed to surround her private life—Nancy could no longer talk. Sometimes she cried; but not often where her roommate could see her.
There was a scrub crew for the eight-oared shell. Nancy made that, and Carrie Littlefield, who was the captain of the school crew, praised her work.
The athletic instructor, Miss Etching, praised Nancy for her swimming and general athletic work. There wasn’t a freshie or soph who could stand against her on the tennis court. She had learned to play basketball, and played it well. The coach had her eye on Nancy for one of the best teams in the school.
On the other hand the girl from Higbee School stood well in her classes, and she had no black marks against her. No teacher had been forced to admonish Nancy, and Corinne Pevay had a cheerful word for her and a smile whenever Nancy crossed her path.
And yet the girl could not be happy. Her own mates—the freshmen—seemed afraid of her. Or, at least, some of them did. And if Nancy was to have chums she must find them, of course, in her own class.
For the first few weeks of a school year the new girls gradually get settled—both in their studies and in their friendships. Had Nancy by good chance been paired with a different girl—with a girl who had not already formed her own associates—matters might have gone along much more smoothly.
But Cora disliked her from the start. And the black-eyed girl was sharp enough to see that accusing Nancy of being “a nobody” for some reason hurt her roommate more than anything else.
Therefore, being of a malicious disposition, Cora continued to harp upon this, until she had spread through the school the suspicion that Nancy had come to Pinewood Hall under unusual circumstances. Nobody knew where she hadcome from. She never spoke of her people, nor of where she had lived.
And, of course, this was quite true. Nancy did not want to tell about her life at Higbee School. Fortunately no girl from Higbee had ever come to Pinewood Hall before, and the girl thought that her secret was safe.
Cora and her friends might suspect, but they really knew nothing about Nancy’s past life. Already some of the girls had received boxes from home—those delightful surprise boxes that give such a zest to boarding-school life. Nancy never received a letter, even.
So, Nancy could not be very happy at Pinewood Hall.
Other girls went around in recreation hours with their arms about each other’s waists, chattering with all the cheerfulness of blackbirds. They had “secrets” together and whispered about them in corners. There were little, harmless gatherings in the dormitories, sometimes after curfew; but Nancy had no part in these girlish dissipations.
Perhaps it was her own fault. But the girl, who felt herself ostracized, feared a rebuff. As Madame Schakael had said to Corinne, Nancy was one of the sensitive ones. And the sensitive girl at boarding school is bound to have a hard time unless she very quickly makes a lasting friendship,or becomes a popular member of some group of her schoolfellows right at the start.
When she felt very lonely in Number 30, or when Cora’s friends made it impossible for her to study, Nancy sought comfort—such as it was—in the gym., or in taking long walks by the river.
The Pinewood estate was a large one and she did not have to go out of bounds to get plenty of walking exercise. Furthermore, as soon as the frost came, all the athletic girls were anxious about the ice.
Clinton River was a quiet, if broad, stream and before the last of October the edges and the quiet pools inshore were skimmed over. Nancy, who loved skating, and had bought a beautiful pair of skates the year before with her own pocket-money, watched the forming ice almost daily.
“Great times on the river when it once freezes over,” she heard one girl say. “And I bet the boys at the Academy are watching just as closely as we are.”
Clinton Academy, Nancy had learned, was only a mile away. She had even seen its towers, from a distance. And some of Dr. Dudley’s boys had passed the lodge one day when Nancy was down there visiting Jessie Pease.
For the girl had occasionally taken advantage of the invitation the lodgekeeper’s wife had extendedto her, and had visited her in the neat little cottage. Mrs. Pease frequently got some of the younger girls together in her kitchen on rainy days, and let them pull taffy and pop corn, and otherwise enjoy themselves.
Yet, once away from the presence of the kind-hearted matron, Nancy found herself no closer to her schoolmates than before.
November brought dark nights and black frost. Clintondale was well up toward the Great Lakes and sometimes the winter arrives early in that part of the country.
It did so this year—the first of Nancy Nelson’s sojourn at Pinewood Hall. One morning Nancy got up while it was still dark, slipping out to the bathroom as noiselessly as a little gray ghost—her robe was of that modest color. There she swiftly made her toilet and then as quietly dressed in Number 30.
She had learned to do all this without rousing Cora, for her roommate was very unpleasant indeed if she woke up in the morning and found Nancy stirring about the room. No matter if the rising bell had rung, Cora always accused Nancy, on these occasions, of deliberately spoiling her morning nap. Corawasa sleepy-head in the morning, and always appeared to “get out of bed on the wrong side.”
However, Nancy left Number 30 without disturbing her roommate on this morning and, well wrapped up against the biting cold, slipped downstairs and out of one of the rear doors. The front door of Pinewood Hall had not been unchained at that hour.
She was the first girl out and it was an hour yet to breakfast time. She ran straight through the pine woods at the back, passing the gymnasium and frozen courts, and so down to the river.
A pale moon still hung low on the horizon. The river seemed as black as ink and not a ripple appeared upon its surface.
“Oh, dear! it’s not frozen at all,” was Nancy’s, first thought.
And then she saw the sheen of the moonlight across the black surface.
“That never is water in the world!” she gasped, and half running, half sliding, descended the steep bank to the verge of the river.
The wide expanse of the stream proved to be sheathed entirely in black, new ice.
Nancy uttered a cry of delight and touched it with one strongly-shod foot, and then the other. It rang under her heel—there was not a single crack of protest. It bore her weight as firmly as a rock.
Breathlessly Nancy tried it farther out. Thekeen frost of a single night had chained the river firmly. She slid a little way. Then she ran for momentum, and slid smoothly, well balanced from her hips, with her feet wide spread. Her red lips opened with a sigh of delight. Her eyes sparkled and the hair was tossed back from under her woolen cap.
“Great! Great!” she cried aloud, when she came to a stop.
She went back down the slide. Her boots rang on the ice as though it were steel. Again and again she slid until there was a well-defined path upon the ice—a path at least ten yards long.
But the horizon grew rosy-red and the dropping moon paled into insignificance. This warned her that the breakfast call would soon sound and she left the ice reluctantly and ran back to the hall.
Before she reached the kitchens the sun popped up and she ran in the path made by its glowing rays across the frozen fields.
It was so cold that the early rising girls were hugging the radiators in the big hall when Nancy came in from the rear, all in a delightful glow. Some of them nodded to her. One girl even said:
“You’ve got pluck to go out for your constitutional a morning like this, Miss Nelson.”
But to Nancy’s ear it seemed as though the girl said it in a patronizing way. She was a junior.Nobody else spoke to the freshman. So Nancy had the secret of the frozen river to herself. She meant to go skating that day if she could.
Every morning the girls of Pinewood Hall took their places after breakfast—class by class—in the hall which balanced the dining room in the other wing of the big house. A brief service of a devotional character always began the real work of the day. Usually Madame Schakael presided at these exercises. And sometimes she had that to say before dismissing the girls that showed them that she had a keen oversight of the school’s manners and morals.
“I know,” she said, on this morning, standing upon the footstool which was always kept behind the desk-pulpit for her; “I know that many of you have been watching and waiting, with great eagerness, for the skating season to set in. Jack Frost, young ladies, seldom disappoints us here at Pinewood Hall. The river is frozen over.”
Here her remarks were punctuated by applause, and some suppressed “Oh, goodies!” The Madame smiled indulgently at this enthusiasm.
“Our rules regarding the sport are pretty well understood, I believe. No skating save during certain designated hours, and never unless Mr. Pease, or the under gardener, is at the boathouse. Bounds extend from the railroad bridge up theriver toward town, to the Big Bend half a mile below our boathouse. The girl who skates out of bounds—they are plain enough—will not skate again for a month. Don’t forget that, girls.
“And now, for the rule that has always been in force at Pinewood,” pursued the Madame, more earnestly, “and the one to which I must demand perfect obedience.
“No girl is to try the ice by herself. No venturesome one must go down there and try the ice without Mr. Pease, or Samuel, being on hand. Remember!
“And,” said Madame Schakael, slowly, “I hear that there has already been somebody on the ice this morning. Whether it was one of you girls, or not, we do not know. But when Mr. Pease came to report to me that the ice was safe for skating he informed me that somebody had been sliding down there, early as it was when he reached the river.
“If any girl has broken our ironclad rule on this point, I want to know it. I expect to see that girl at once after prayers. Of course, if nobody here is guilty we must believe that some passer-by ventured down upon the river while crossing Pinewood estate.
“Now, young ladies, I need say nothing more on this subject, I believe. After recitations to-day,those who wish may enjoy the pleasure and exercise of ice-skating. The boathouse will be warmed. Samuel will be there to sharpen skates for those who wish. And he can supply you with extra straps or other appliances. You understand that he makes a little extra money that way, and I approve of it.”
Then she touched the rising bell, and instantly the girls arose and a bustle of low converse and the rustle of dresses and clack of shoes on the polished floor made up the usual confusion of sounds as the girls separated for their classrooms. Nearly four hundred girls manage to make considerable noise.
Nancy went immediately to the Madame’s office. It was the first time she had ever been called there; it was the first time, indeed, that she had ever been accused of any kind of a fault since arriving at the school.
So she did not feel very happy. She had not known of the rule which Madame Schakael had said was so well understood. She had not meant to break the law.
But she could see very clearly that the rule was a just one. She had no business to venture on the ice without asking permission. And her heart throbbed and her face flushed and paled by turns as she waited for the principal to appear.
But when Madame Schakael entered the anteroom she was not alone. Nancy, from within, heard another voice—a shrill and unpleasant voice which she very well knew.
“Well, I don’t care what you say, Madame, itwasher. There’s no other girl in the whole school who gets up so early and disturbs us other girls—so now! She’s stirring around half the night, I declare! And she was theonlygirl out of doors this morning so early.”
“And she is your roommate; is she, Miss Rathmore?” interrupted the Madame’s smooth, low voice.
“Well! I never wanted her! I wrote home and told my mother she was a nobody——”
“Your mother was kind enough to write to me on the subject,” said the principal of Pinewood Hall. “But I could not allow any change in the dormitory arrangements for the inconsequential reasons given. Nancy Nelson is quite the same as any other girl at the Hall. I wish to hear nothing more onthattopic, Cora.
“But this other matter, of course, is different. If a rule has been broken of course I must take cognizance of it. And I feel sure that if your roommate was the person on the ice this morning, she will report the fact to me herself——”
She pushed the office door wide open. Nancyhad listened to this conversation perforce. There had been no escape for her.
“Ah! As I expected,” said the doll-like little woman, smiling calmly at Nancy. “You see how mistaken one may be, Cora? Nancy is here ahead of us.”
Cora Rathmore shrank back from the door with a very red face. Nancy’s eyes flashed as she looked at her ill-natured roommate. She realized well enough that Cora had deliberately—and without sufficient evidence herself—tried to get her into trouble with the principal.
Cora was not easily embarrassed, however. In a moment she shot the other girl a scornful glance and, without a word to Madame Schakael, walked out of the office. It really did seem as though it was Nancy who had done the wrong, instead of her roommate.
“You are here to see me, Miss Nelson?” asked the Madame, briskly, ignoring the other girl and her report.
“Yes, Madame.”
“Because of what I said at prayers?”
“Yes, Madame.”
“You are a new girl. Did you not know of the rule that all girls must keep off the river until it is pronounced safe by Mr. Pease?”
“I did not know of the rule. And I did notthink that I was doing wrong when I went on the ice this morning,” returned Nancy, quietly.
“I believe you, Miss Nelson. You are excused. Don’t do it again. I can’t afford to have any of my girls drowned—especially one who stands as well as you do in the weekly reports,” and the little woman patted her on her cheek and smiled.
“You may go skating this afternoon, if you wish, and if you are perfect in your recitations, as I suppose you will be,” continued Madame Schakael. “Wait, my dear! Here are two letters for you. They are both from Mr. Henry Gordon’s office, and I presume they are from him. I make it a rule never to open letters from the parents or guardians of my girls; other letters, you understand, must be scrutinized unless the correspondence has already been arranged for.”
She passed the wondering Nancy two businesslike looking envelopes with the card printed in the corner of “Ambrose, Necker & Boles.”
“Thank you, Madame,” said the girl, and hurried away to her first class with the letters fairly burning a hole in her pocket.
There would be no opportunity before the first intermission—at 10:30 o’clock—to look at their contents.
CHAPTER XIITHE FIRST ADVANCE
Madame Schakael had prophesied that Nancy would be perfect in her recitations that day, and so there would be no doubt of her being able to go skating on the river. But with the unexpected letters from Mr. Gordon’s office unopened, it seemed hardly probable that Nancy would pull through the day without a reprimand.
“Whatisthe matter with you, Miss Nelson?” demanded one of the teachers sharply, when Nancy had made an unusually brainless answer to a very simple question.
Nancy came out of her haze with a sharp shock.
“Why—why, Miss Maybrick, I know very much better than that,” she admitted.
“Where is your mind, then, Miss?”
“I—I——”
Nancy was usually frankness personified, and she blurted it out now:
“I’m wondering what is in the two letters I have in my pocket, Miss Maybrick.”
“Where did you get them?” demanded the suspicious teacher.
“Madame Schakael gave them to me. I suppose they are from my guar——” No! she could not claim Henry Gordon as her guardian. “From the gentleman who pays my bills here,” she added, in a lower voice.
“Well, for mercy’s sake go to your seat and read them,” said the instructor, but more mildly. “They may be important. And having mastered their contents, please try to master the lesson.”
Nancy did as she was bid. With trembling fingers she opened one of the envelopes. They both were typewritten as to address; but one seemed addressed by an amateur in the art of typewriting. Nancy opened the other first.
The enclosure was a slip of paper on which was written in a hurried scrawl:
“You may need something extra. This is for your own use.—H.Gordon.”
And wrapped in this paper was a crisp twenty-dollar bill!
Nancy had scarcely spent a penny of her carefully hoarded pocket money since coming to Pinewood Hall. Indeed, she had found no opportunity for using it.
There had been plenty of secret “spreads” and“fudge orgies” in other rooms. Cora had been to a lot of them, and had always slipped back into Number 30 without being caught by any prowling teacher.
But of course Nancy had been invited to contribute to none of these, and she was a particularly healthy girl with a particularly healthy appetite: so she did not crave “sponge cake and pickles,” or other combinations of forbidden fruits supposed to be the boarding-school misses’ extreme delight.
Mr. Gordon had sent the banknote to her without any more feeling, seemingly, than he would have had in throwing a bone to a dog. Yet, it might be his way of showing her sympathy. Nancy slipped it back in the envelope and picked up the second letter.
And before she opened this she believed she knew what it contained. She had not forgotten “Scorch” O’Brien. Scorch had promised to watch “Old Gordon” and write to her. He had used one of the office envelopes and had stolen a minute when some typewriter was not in use.
Madame Schakael thought both letters were from Mr. Gordon. Nancy was too curious as to what Scorch had written to deny herself the reading of the contraband epistle.
It was much blotted and the scrawl characteristic of an office boy’s chirography proved that histerms at public school had not done Scorch much good. This was the letter:
“Nancy Nelson,
Dear Miss:
I guess you haven’t forgotten Scorch O’Brien. That’s me. I said I’d rite if I got a line on Old Gordon, that he was doing you queer. I bet he is, but I don’t know nothing for sure yet. I put a twist on him this morning and I see a letter now in the male-basket for you, so I says to myself, ‘Scorch, what you said took like vaccination.’ Ouch! me arm hurts yet!
Well, I says to Old G., says I, ‘What’s come of the girl what blew me to lunch at the Arrandale? She was some swell little dame, she was.’
Says he, ‘Mind your own business, Scorch. That’s a good motto for you to paste up over your desk.’
‘Nix,’ says I. ‘If I didn’t mind everybody else’s biz in this office the whole joint would go to grass.’ And that’s right. ‘That girl’s just the same as in jail at that boarding-school,’ says I. ‘Have you forgotten her?’
‘How’d I remember?’ says he, looking sort of queer.
‘Come across with a piece of change for her,’ says me—I’m practerkal, I be. Money always comes in handy; now, don’t it? Write an’ tell me if he took my tip. And no more now, from,
“Yours respectfully,
“Scorch O’Brien.”
It was Scorch all over—that letter! Nancy Nelson came near laughing right out in the classroom; but she could cram both letters into her pocket and go on with her studies with a more composed mind.
Scorch was evidently her friend. And eminently practical, as he declared. Nothing could be more practical than that twenty-dollar bill. And the red-haired Irish boy had put it into Mr. Gordon’s mind to send her this substantial tip.
She took the twenty-dollar bill out and looked at it again. It was very real.
Cora Rathmore sat behind her in this class. Nancy happened to turn about as she slipped the banknote out of sight again, and she saw that her roommate was looking hard at her. Nancy turned away herself. She was angrier with Cora than she had ever been before since the opening of Pinewood Hall.
Jennie Bruce, one of the girls of her class whom Nancy admired the most, leaned over and whispered to her:
“Goodness me! but you are the wealthy girl. Was that real money, or just stage money?”
Jennie was a thin, snappy girl, with dancing eyes, a continual smile, and as elusive as a drop of mercury. She just couldn’t keep still, and she was always getting minor marks in deportmentbecause her sense of fun was sure to bubble over at inopportune times.
“I—I guess it’s real money,” whispered Nancy, although talking during lessons was frowned on by all the instructors.
But Nancy was only too glad when Jennie Bruce spoke to her. She was just a little afraid of Jennie’s sharp tongue; and yet she had never been the butt of any of the harum-scarum’s jokes. Perhaps Jennie had spared Nancy because the latter was so much alone. The fun-loving one was not cruel.
“Twen-ty-dol-lars,” whispered Jennie, with big eyes. “You certainly are rich. What a lot of pickles that would buy!” and she grinned.
Nancy smiled. She knew that Jennie was only in fun when she suggested such an expenditure. But the thought smote the lonely girl’s mind that by the spending of this money in “treating” she might gain a certain popularity among the other girls.
Really, that was what made Grace Montgomery so popular. She had more money to spend than almost any other girl in the school—in the freshman class, at least. Nancy asked herself seriously if she should strive to make friendships through such a channel.
Young as she was, the girl had serious thoughts at times, and this was one of the times. She hidthe money in the bosom of her dress and at recess said nothing about it, although she saw several of the girls whispering and pointing her out.
But the most surprising thing that happened was Cora coming to her almost as soon as they were released from the classrooms for a short run in the basement recreation room.
“I suppose you think I’m a mean thing,” said the black-eyed girl, glancing at Nancy askance.
“I’ll leave it for you to say,” returned Nancy. “If I had run to Madame Schakael with a story about you——”
“How do you know I went to her?” snapped Cora. “She asked me where you were. You slipped into her office so quick that she thought you were trying to get out of it, of course. She knew all the time that you were the girl who had been on the ice.”
Now, Nancy did not believe this at all; but she said nothing to show Cora that she distrusted her first friendly (?) advance.
“Anyway,” said the black-eyed one, “shedidask me about you, and if you were out early, as usual. Oh! you can’t fool the Madame.”
“I shouldn’t want to try,” observed Nancy, quietly.
“Well! if you didn’t act so offish we girls would like to be friends with you,” said Cora, tuckingher arm into Nancy’s. “Going skating this afternoon?”
This was the first time any girl at Pinewood Hall had ever walked in a “chummy” manner with Nancy. But to tell the truth, Nancy was not sure whether this overture towards peace on the part of her roommate really meant anything or not.
There were lots of the girls whom she thought she would like better than Cora—or her friends. There was the lively Jennie Bruce, for instance. Nancy often watched her flitting back and forth, from group to group, being “hail-fellow-well-met” with them all. Jennie made friends without putting forth any effort, it seemed.
“Oh, I wish I had Jennie for a roommate,” thought Nancy Nelson. “I really would be happy then, I do believe.”
But this day seemed not to be a bad one for Nancy, after all. Cora waited for her, with her skates, after recitations were over, and they joined a party of Cora’s chums on the way to the river.
Grace Montgomery was not among these; Grace never had a word for Nancy, so the younger girl kept away from the senator’s daughter.
But the river was broad, and the ice was like glass, and in the exhilaration of the sport Nancy forgot snubs and back-biting, and all the ill-naturedslights under which she had suffered since becoming a dweller in Number 30, West Side, Pinewood Hall.
She noted one thing that afternoon. Few of the girls skated toward the railroad bridge; but most of them to the school bounds in the other direction. The reason for skating down the river instead of up Nancy did not at first understand. Then she heard some of Cora’s friends talking and laughing about it.
“Guess the old doctor has a grouch again. Isn’t that mean? There isn’t a boy in sight.”
“Not one!”
“Isn’t it horrid of him?” cried another.
“I’ll wager the old doctor has a channel sawed through the ice at the bend here before he lets the boys out,” declared a third.
“Ididwant so to see Bob Endress,” Grace Montgomery complained. “I want him to bring a lot of nice boys home from the Academy at the holidays, so as to have them at my party.”
It struck Nancy that she had heard this Bob Endress spoken of before; but she had no idea that there was any reason whysheshould be interested in him.
The girls came in from the ice half an hour before supper, cold, tired, but merry. Nancy ran up to tidy her hair and wash. She found two ofCora’s chief chums in Number 30; but Cora herself chanced to be out.
These girls did not even notice Nancy when she came in. But that was not strange. Often a dozen would come and go at Number 30 without once speaking to the quiet little girl who occupied one-half of the dormitory.
“Well, you take it from me,” one was saying to the other while Nancy brushed her hair, “she’s got to do her share. It looks to me as though she was sponging.”
“Oh, do you think so?”
“Everybody else has put up for a fudge party, or something of the kind, while she hasn’t done a thing.”
“Maybe she hasn’t the money?”
“Then she shouldn’t be in on all the other girls’ good times. And she wouldn’t be if she didn’t toady so to Grace.”
“Ah, now——”
“That’s right. Lou would have left her out of the pound party last week, only of course Grace demanded to look over the list of invited guests.”
“Well! Idothink Grace takes too much upon herself sometimes.”
“She’s going to be class president. Voting comes just before the Christmas holidays, and when we come back we’ll know who gets the chair.Madame doesn’t allow the freshies to organize until then. Well! Cora’s got to do different.”
“Mamie Beasley says she isn’t going to invite her to her tea on Friday. And, you know, the teachers approve of afternoon teas. It makes for sociability, they say.”
“But Cora——”
“Hush-up!” commanded another. “Want everybody to hear you?” and she motioned toward Nancy. The latter saw her in the glass.
So the two went out. Nancy wondered if Cora was so popular, after all. If itwasCora of whom the two were speaking.
She noted, however, that for a day or two Cora remained in her room, and few of her friends visited her. This suited Nancy very well, even if she did not like her roommate. The dormitory was quieter and one could study.
“My mother’s just as mean as she can be!” blurted out Cora one day when she and Nancy were alone. “She won’t give me another cent of pocket-money until the week we go home for Christmas. And I spent all my allowance right away when school opened. Did you, Nancy?”
“Did I what?” asked Nancy, looking up from her book.
“Have you spent all your allowance?”
“No-o,” said Nancy slowly, not quite sure thatshehadan allowance, Mr. Gordon gave her money so irregularly.
“Lucky girl! And I promised I’d give the crowd a big blow-out here next week. I sent to mother for the money, and told her about it, and she won’t even send me another box of goodies.”
“That is too bad,” observed Nancy, with a faint smile.
“Isn’t it?” exclaimed Cora. “And they’ll all say Number 30 is so mean! I hate to have our room getthatname.”
This was the first time that Nancy had supposed Cora cared anything for the reputation of the room. Certainly, she had never before appeared to consider that Nancy and she had anything in common.
“You see, we’re just freshmen, and the sophs criticise us so. I got acquainted with Belle Macdonald and some of those other girls away back last spring. They expect us freshies to treat them if we want their friendship.”
“I don’t think that friendships bought in that way last; do you?” asked Nancy.
“Say! how do you expect to get popular in a school like this?” demanded Cora, in disgust.
“I—I don’t know,” sighed Nancy.
“How is it Grace is so popular?” cried Cora Rathmore. “Why, she’s always doing somethingto get the other girls interested. She’s going to be our class president.”
Nancy said nothing. She wondered if Grace Montgomery, after all, was quite as popular as Cora thought.
“I tell you what,” said the black-eyed girl, suddenly, “let’s have a party in here, anyway?”
“Why, I—I don’t know anything about giving a party,” confessed Nancy. “And I’m afraid the girls wouldn’t come.”
“Sure they will—in a minute!” declared Cora, confidently. “All I’ve got to do is to tell ’em. You see, I’ve been making friends in Pinewood Hall, while you’ve been ‘boning.’ Some of them think you are too stiff.”
“I don’t mean to be,” protested Nancy, shaking her head.
“Well, here’s a chance for you to show ’em. You say you’ve got some money left?”
“Oh, yes.”
“How much?” asked Cora, bluntly.
“Well—I’ve got more than twenty dollars,” confessed Nancy.
“Crickey-me!” gasped Cora. “Twenty dollars? Why, we’d give the dandiest kind of a spread—salad, and ice cream, and cakes—Oh, crickey-me! that would be great.”
“But what would Corinne say?” blurted out Nancy.
“Hah! those big girls have after-lights-out spreads, too. That Canuck won’t dare say a word.”
“But some of the teachers——”
“You needn’t borrow trouble,” said Cora. “Of course, if you don’t want to do it——”
“I—I——”
“Sure, you understand that I’ll pay my half,” went on Cora, eagerly. “All you got to do is to lend me the money until Christmas time.”
“Oh, that’s not it!” cried Nancy, who was naturally a generous-hearted girl.
“Then you’re in for it?”
“If—if you think the other girls will like it?”
“Sure they will!” cried Cora. “Hurrah! Now, you leave it to me. I’ll tell Grace first of all, and we’ll pick out a nice crowd. Why, with twenty dollars we can have at least twenty girls.”
Nancy began to enthuse a little herself. She longed so to be friendly with her own class, especially. There was Jennie Bruce, the fun-loving girl, and several others whom she particularly liked. Of course, they would all have to be domiciled in the West Side. No girl could cross from one side of the Hall to the other after curfew without being observed.
And the spread which Cora planned was not to begin until all the lights were out and the teacher, whose turn it was to be on that night, had gone her rounds to see that all the dormitories were quiet.
“We’ll take a night when Maybrick is on, if we can,” said Cora. “She goes to bed to sleep! No prowling around for her after she has once decided that all the chickens are on the roost.”
And Nancy, with a suspicion deep in her mind that it was all wrong, and yet willing to suffer much for the sake of gaining “popularity,” so-called, allowed Cora to go ahead with the preparations for the coming surreptitious feast.
CHAPTER XIIIIT PROVES DISASTROUS
Nancy might have given too much thought and time to the coming “midnight spread,” and neglected her lessons a bit had Cora Rathmore not taken the entire arrangements for the affair into her own hands. Cora did not seem to mind getting only “fair” marked on her weekly reports. She just shrugged her shoulders and said:
“Ishould worry!”
But before Nancy plucked up the courage to say anything about who was to be invited she found that Cora had already seen to that—Cora and Grace Montgomery.
“I’d like to have Jennie Bruce come,” Nancy suggested timidly one day.
“Goodness! why didn’t you say so before?” snapped Cora.
“Why? Won’t there be room for her?”
“We’ve made up the whole list, and the girls have been invited. We couldn’t squeeze in another girl.”
“Why—why, who made up the list?”
“Grace and I. Here it is,” and Cora snapped a paper upon Nancy’s desk.
Nancy read it over without comment. There wasn’t a girl invited to the party at Number 30, West Side, whom Nancy liked any better than she did Cora herself! She began to doubt if the coming entertainment was going to be a success—as far as she was concerned—after all.
The girls ran in to see Cora again. Even Grace appeared in Number 30. But none of them spoke more than perfunctorily to Nancy, and the lonely girl felt herself as much “out of it” as ever.
But she had one enjoyment now that made up for many previous lonely hours at the school. She could skate!
Clinton River remained frozen over; the ice grew thicker and the lodgekeeper and Samuel reported each morning that it was perfectly safe.
The boys from the Academy, too, appeared. Nancy was not much interested in them—only curious. Even the girls of her own class seemed to be very desirous of making acquaintances among the Academy boys.
“You see,” Jennie Bruce told her, “after the holidays we have entertainments at the Hall, and Dr. Dudley lets his boys give a minstrel show. We each have a dance during the winter—one at the Academy and one at the Hall; and if you knowsome of the boys beforehand it’s lots easier to get partners at the dance.”
“I’d just as lief dance with another girl, I think,” said Nancy, timidly.
“Pshaw! that’s no fun,” returned Jennie.
“I neverdiddance with a boy,” admitted Nancy. “Where—where I lived only the girls danced together.”
“Where was that?” demanded Jennie.
“At school,” said Nancy, blushing, and sorry she had said so much now.
“Oh! a ‘kid’ school?” laughed Jennie.
“Well—yes.”
“Where was it?”
“It—it was a long way from here,” responded Nancy, slowly.
She couldn’t bear to tell even Jennie—with whom she so desired to be friends—where Higbee School was located. Of course, Jennie noticed this point of mystery, and she looked at Nancy curiously. The latter couldn’t find another word to say.
She skated off by herself. The ringing ice was delightful. Nancy skated as well as any boy, while she was naturally—being a girl—more graceful in her motions.
She sped like a dart across the river, came around in a great curve, like a bird tacking againsta stiff breeze, and then started back “on the roll.”
Hands in her jersey pockets, her skates tapping the ice firmly as she bore her weight first on one, then on the other foot, Nancy seemed fairly to float over the frozen river.
She saw a group of girls and boys standing about where the Hall boundary was; but she did not recognize any of them until she was rolling past. Then she heard Grace Montgomery’s shrill voice:
“Oh, she’s only showing off. Her name’s Nelson. Cora knows all about her.”
“No, I don’t,” snapped Cora Rathmore’s voice. “But she’s chummed on me.”
Nancy heard no more. She didn’t want to. She realized that, after all, behind her back these girls were speaking just as unkindly of her as ever.
Suddenly she realized that the group had broken up. At least, one of the boys had darted out of it and was racing down toward her.
“What’s the matter with you, Bob?” she heard Grace call after the boy.
“Say! I know that girl,” a cheerful voice declared, and the next moment the speaker, bending low, and racing like a dart, reached Nancy’s side.
“Hold on! Don’t you remember me?” he exclaimed.
Nancy looked at him, startled. His plump, rosy, smiling face instantly reflected an image in her memory.
“I’m Bob Endress,” he said. “But if it hadn’t been for you I wouldn’t have had any name at all—or anything else in life. Don’t you remember?”
It was the boy who had been saved from the millrace that August afternoon. Of course Nancy couldn’t have forgotten him. But she was so confused she did not know what to say for the moment.
“You haven’t forgotten throwing that tire to me?” he cried. “Why! that was the smartest thing! The chauffeur would never have thought of it. And Grace and those other girls would have been about as much use as so many mice. You were as good as a boy,youwere. I’d have been drowned.”
“I—I’m glad you weren’t,” she gasped.
“Then you remember me?”
“Oh, yes. I couldn’t forget your face.”
“Well!” he cried, “I never did expect to see you around this part of the country. But I told father I wanted to go back there to Malden next summer and see if I couldn’t come across you. And my mother wrote to a friend there about you, too. We all wanted to know who you were.”
“I—I am Nancy Nelson,” said the girl, timidly.
“Sure! Grace, or somebody, was just speaking of you,” said the boy. “You see, I was motoring through that country on the way to Chicago, in Senator Montgomery’s car. That was a pretty spot at that old mill and the girls saw the lilies. So I had to wade in for them—like a chump,” and he laughed.
“Itwasdangerous, I suppose,” confessed Nancy. “But I often longed to wade in myself for them.”
“And you got them anyway!” he cried, bursting into another laugh. “Grace and the others were sore about it. They had to wait until we got to the next town before we found any more lilies. Then I got a boat and went after them.”
Nancy had stopped skating, and she and the boy stood side by side, talking. What the Montgomery girl and her friends would think about this Nancy did not at the time imagine.
“But it’s funny Grace didn’t recognize you,” said Bob, suddenly.
“No. In the confusion they wouldn’t have noticed me very closely,” Nancy replied.
“Well! I don’t see how Grace could have missed knowing such a jolly girl as you.”
His boyish, outspoken opinion amused Nancy. Although Bob was at least three years her seniorshe soon became self-possessed. Girls are that way—usually.
“You’re a dandy skater,” said Bob. “Will you skate with me?”
“Oh, yes; if you want me to,” replied Nancy.
She had never skated with a boy before. They crossed hands and started off on the long roll. Nancy was just as sturdy on her skates as the boy. It was delightful to cross the ice so easily, yet swiftly, and feel that one’s partner was perfectly secure, too.
And Bob Endress was such a nice boy. Nancy decided that her first good opinion of him, formed when she had seen him wading in the millpond after water-lilies, was correct. He was gentlemanly, frank, and as jolly as could be.
She remembered very well now that she had heard various other girls at Pinewood Hall talk of Bob Endress. He was some distant connection of the haughty Grace Montgomery.
And he had left Grace and all those other girls in a minute to renew his odd acquaintance with Nancy.
The latter could not fail to feel a glow all through her at this thought. She had all the aspirations of other girls. She wanted to be liked by people—even by boys. And Bob was evidently a great favorite with her schoolmates.
Round and round the course they skated. It seemed to Nancy as though she never would tire with such a partner. And she forgot that the girls Bob had deserted might be offended with her. For once—a tiny, short hour—Nancy Nelson was perfectly happy.
Until the distant chime in the tower of Pinewood Hall warned the girls that they must go in, Nancy and Bob skimmed over the ice to the envy of less accomplished skaters. Nancy came back to the boathouse all in a glow, after promising to meet Bob the next afternoon on the river.
There were Grace Montgomery and Cora, and Belle Macdonald, and the others of their clique, taking off their skates. Nancy felt so happy that she would have made friends, just then, with almost anyone.
She flung off her skates and smiled at the other girls. She smiled at Samuel when she asked him, to sharpen them against the next afternoon, and tipped him for his trouble.
But whereas the under gardener smiled in return and praised her skating, the girls stared at her as though she were a complete stranger. Grace turned her back contemptuously. Cora scowled blackly.
And when she was back in Number 30, West Side, making ready for supper, her roommatecame in noisily, tossed her skates on the floor, and burst out with:
“Well! you’re a nice girl,youare!”
“What’s the matter now?” asked Nancy, with more courage than usual.
“I should think you’d ask!”
“Idoask,” said Nancy.
“Well, you’ve just about spoiled my—our—party.”
“How?”
“You know well enough,” snapped Cora.
“I do not,” declared Nancy. “I have done nothing.”
“Oh, no! Just walking off with Bob Endress and keeping him all the afternoon. Why, Grace is his cousin—and she’ll never forgive you.”
It was on the tip of Nancy’s tongue to say she didn’t care; but instead she remained silent.
“I had the hardest work to coax her to come to-night,” went on Cora.
This was the evening marked for the spread in Number 30.
“I do not see that I have done anything to you girls,” said Nancy, with some warmth. “I happened to know Bob Endress——”
“How didyoucome to know Bob? He never said anything about it,” snapped Cora.
“Well, I can assure you we were acquainted.”
“It’s certainly very strange,” said the other girl, suspiciously.
“I don’t see that it is anybody’s business but our own,” Nancy Nelson returned, with growing confidence. “And I did not mean to offend either you or Miss Montgomery.”
“It’s very strange.”
“Not at all.”
“Well, I don’t know how you will explain it to Grace.”
“I don’t have to,” said Nancy, and now shewasgetting angry.
“Let me tell you, Miss, you will have to,” cried Cora, more snappishly than ever.
“I do not see why.”
“Let me tell you Grace Montgomery is the most influential and popular girl in our class. You’ll find that out if you continue to offend her.”
“I don’t see how I have offended her; nor do I see how I can pacify her if she is angry with me,” returned Nancy, doggedly.
“You’d better let Bob Endress alone, then,” cried Cora.
“Why! how meanly you talk,” said Nancy, fairly white now with anger.
“Well! there’s something very strange about how you took him right away from us——”
“If you don’t stop talking like that,” Nancyanswered, her eyes blazing, “I shall not speak to you at all.”
“Well, you’ve got to explain to Grace, then.”
“I will explain nothing to her.”
“Then you mean to spoil our party to-night?”
“No. It isn’tmyparty, that is evident. I’ll go into some other room while you are holding it, if that’s what you want.”
Cora looked at her askance. Nancy had never shown any temper before since the term had opened. Cora did not really know whether her roommate would do as she said, or not.
“Oh, we’re not dying to have you in here. You can go to Number 38. You know both of the girls from there will be here.”
“That’s what I’ll do, then,” answered Nancy, firmly.
“I’ll tell Grace,” said Cora, rather uncertainly. “Then she’ll be sure and come. Oh, sheismad.”
“I hope she will remain mad with me as long as we are both at Pinewood!” cried Nancy, desperately, and then she ran out of the room to hide the tears of anger and disappointment which she could no longer keep back.