CHAPTER XIVHEAPS OF TROUBLE
Nancy wept as she had never wept since coming to Pinewood Hall. But she was weeping as much for rage as for sorrow. Cora’s insulting words, and her cruelty, had lashed Nancy’s indignation to the boiling point.
Shecouldspoil all their fun on this evening. She knew where all the goodies were hidden. Most of them were in her closet, and in Cora’s. And her money had paid for every scrap that had been smuggled in from the Clintondale caterer’s and from the delicatessen store and grocery.
She could not only stop the girls from having the spread in Number 30; but she could stop their having it at all.
However, the heat of her passion was soon over. She bathed her eyes and flushed face and went down to supper without seeing Cora again.
She did not sit near the Montgomery clique at table, anyway; but she heard them talking and laughing during the meal, and afterward some ofthem passed where Nancy sat and looked at her oddly.
None of them spoke to her. All of a sudden they had dropped her again and she was just as friendless as she had been before Cora Rathmore suggested the secret supper.
When she went back to Number 30, however, Cora followed her.
“Now, I want to know just what you mean to do, Miss?” she said, standing inside the door and scowling at Nancy.
“What about?”
“About the supper to-night.”
“You certainly don’t needmeat the supper,” observed Nancy, quietly.
“I should hope not! But we don’t propose to have you run to the teachers and give our secrets away.”
Nancy started up from her chair and advanced a step toward her tormentor. She really had it in her mind to box Cora’s ears—and the black-eyed girl knew it.
“Don’t you dare touch me!” she cried, shrinking back.
“Then don’t you dare suggest that I’d be a telltale,” warned Nancy. “I leave that to you.”
“Oh, you do!”
Nancy was silent, and Cora calmed down.
“Then you’ll go out for the evening?” she asked, at last.
“Gladly,” said Nancy.
“Mabel and Hilary say you can stay in 38.”
“Very well.”
“And of course you are not going to be mean about your share of the goodies?” asked Cora, slily.
Nancy wanted to say that it seemed to herallthe goodies were hers. But she only tossed Cora the key of her closet.
“I hope you’ll have a good time,” she said, in a low voice. “But if I were you, Cora, and had treated anybody as meanly as you have me, I couldneverhave a good time.”
“Pooh!” replied Cora, insolently. Such considerations made no impression on her. She only thought that Nancy was “too easy for anything,” and laughed and joked about her to Grace Montgomery.
Nancy would not cry before her roommate. She spent the evening as usual in apparently close application to the lessons for the next day; scarcely a word was said in Number 30 until curfew at nine. The other girls kept entirely away from the room that evening. Going back and forth might have drawn the suspicion of Miss Maybrick to that particular dormitory.
At bedtime the two girls occupying Number 30 undressed and got into bed as usual. The electric lights went out on that floor. The corridors were lighted only by caged gas jets, turned low. In each room was a candle in an ample stick. The girls had to use these if they needed to move about in the night, and all the after-hour spreads were illuminated by candles, each girl participating bringing her own taper to the feast.
The hour between nine and ten dragged by drearily enough. Especially was this so for Nancy. She lay wide awake, with swollen, feverish eyes, and waited for the ten o’clock gong.
At that hour the lights on the upper floors were out and, a little later, Miss Maybrick’s soft footfall sounded in the corridor. Occasionally the teacher turned a knob and looked into a study. The draperies between studies and bedrooms had to be left open so that the teacher could cast the ray of her electric hand-lamp right in upon the pillows of the two beds.
And if there was not the proper number of heads on those pillows, an investigation was sure to follow!
Miss Maybrick was known to be a sound sleeper, however. It was pretty safe for the girls to have their “orgies” on the nights this particular instructor was on duty.
Miss Maybrick went past and, in a moment, Cora slipped out of bed and to the door. In the moonlight Nancy saw her crouched beside the door, reach up and turn the knob, open the portal a little way, and listen.
The rustle of the teacher’s skirts was lost in the distance. She had already been upon the upper floors; and now her inspection was over. The soft closing of her own door, which was right at the head of the stairway, came to the ears of the listening girls.
Almost immediately there was a rustling and whispering in the corridor. Cora threw the door of Number 30 open. Somebody giggled.
“Come on!” whispered Cora, sharply.
Nancy, feeling that it was all wrong and that no good would come of it, slid out of bed, sought her slippers with her bare toes, wriggled her feet into them, and seized her gray robe.
She darted out of Number 30 before any of the visitors arrived, and went to the nearest bathroom. There she waited until she was pretty sure the twenty girls had gathered to enjoy their stolen fun.
Number 38 was just across in the other short corridor. Nancy ran there, sobbing quietly to herself. Just before she opened the door somebody grabbed her arm.
Oh! how frightened she was for the moment. She was sure a lurking teacher had found her out of her room.
“Hush! don’t be a dunce! It’s only me,” said a kind, if sharp, voice.
“Jennie Bruce!”
“Of course it is. Who did you think I was—your grandmother’s ghost?” giggled Jennie, pinching her.
“Oh, oh!” panted Nancy.
“You’re scared to death. What’s the matter?”
“You were going into Number 38?”
“Yes,” admitted Nancy.
“Well, come into my room. It’s Number 40. I’m chummed with a girl who has gone to that party.”
“You—you know about it, then?” stammered Nancy.
“I should say I did.”
“And your roommate was invited—and notyou?”
“Grace and her crowd aren’t in love with me,” remarked Jennie.
“Oh!”
“And I reckon they are not overpoweringly fond ofyou?” suggested Jennie.
Nancy could not speak then. Jennie put her arm over her shoulder.
“Come on intomybed, Nancy,” she said. “Sally will wake us up when she comes back from the spread. I think Cora and that Montgomery girl have treated you just as meanly as they could.”
Nancy still sobbed. Jennie opened the door of Number 40 and drew her inside.
“Don’t you let them see that you care,” commanded Jennie.
“I—I don’t care a—aboutthem,” sobbed Nancy. “It’s—it’s because I haven’t a friend in the world.”
“Oh, don’t say that, honey,” urged the other girl, still holding Nancy in her arms after they had discarded their robes and crept between the sheets.
“It—it is so,” sobbed Nancy.
“You mean you haven’t made friends here at Pinewood?”
“I haven’t made friends anywhere,” said Nancy.
“Why—why—Surely you have some folks—some relatives——?”
Nancy’s naturally frank nature overpowered her caution here. Jennie Bruce was the first girl who had ever seemed to care about Nancy’s troubles.She did not seem curious—only kind. The lonely girl did the very thing which her caution all the time had warned her would be disastrous.
She opened her heart to Jennie Bruce.
“Do you know who I am?” she demanded of the surprised Jennie.
“Why—what do you mean? Of course you are Nancy Nelson.”
“I don’t even know if I have a right to that name.”
“Mercy!”
“It’s the only name I know. It seems to be the only name anybody who knows about me, knows.”
“Then it’s yours.”
“How do I knowthat?” queried Nancy, bitterly. “I’m just a little Miss Nobody.”
“Goodness me! but thatdoessound romantic,” whispered Jennie.
“Romantic!” cried Nancy, with scorn. “It’s nothing of the kind. You’re as bad as Scorch.”
“As bad aswho?”
“Scorch O’Brien,” replied Nancy.
“Well, for goodness sake! if that doesn’t sound interesting,” cried Jenny. “Who is Scorch O’Brien? What a perfectly ridiculous name! Why ‘Scorch?’”
“He’s red-headed,” explained Nancy, doubtfulnow. She saw that she had got herself to a point where she must tell it all—every bit of her story—if she wished to keep Jennie’s friendship.
“Bully! Scorch O’Brien is fine,” laughed Jennie. “Let’s hear all about you, Nancy Nelson. I bet you’ve got lots of the queerest friends, only you don’t know it. I—I’ve got nothing but brothers, and sisters, and cousins, and all that sort of trash. The Bruces hold most all the political offices in the town where I come from. You couldn’t throw a stone anywhere in Hollyburg without hitting one of the family.
“But just think! You’ve got no folks to bother you. There are no teasing cousins. You haven’t got to ‘be nice’ to relatives that you fairly can’t help hating!
“Oh, I believe you’ve got itgood, Nancy Nelson; only you don’t know it!”
So, thus encouraged, and lying in Jennie’s warm embrace, Nancy whispered the full and particular account of the little, unknown girl who had been brought to Higbee School, far away in Malden, nearly ten years before.
She told Jennie about Miss Prentice and about the long, tedious vacations with Miss Trigg, even down to the last one when she had helped save Bob Endress—then a perfect stranger to her—from the millpond.
“And he knew you right away on the ice to-day? I saw him! Good for you! He’s the most popular boy in Clinton Academy,” declared Jennie with conviction.
“But I don’t care anything aboutthat,” said Nancy, honestly. “I want the girls to like me. And I know if they learn that I am just a nobody——”
“What nonsense! You may be a great heiress. Why! maybe you belong to royalty——”
“In America!” ejaculated Nancy, the practical.
“Well! they could have brought you over the ocean.”
“I haven’t heard of any of the royal families of Europe advertising for a lost princess,” Nancy said, in better humor now. “And I know I don’t look like the Turks, or the Chinese, or Hindoos, or anything like that. I guess I’m an American, all right.”
“But you must have somebody very rich belonging to you,” cried Jennie.
“I don’t know.”
“Then that Mr. Gordon must know more about you than he will tell.”
“I—I am almost tempted to believe so,” admitted Nancy.
“I believe it!”
“Scorch says so.”
“That boy is all right,” declared Jennie. “I’d like to know him.”
“But I don’t see how Mr. Gordon is to be made to tell what he knows—if hedoesknow more than he has admitted about me,” sighed Nancy.
“Neither do I—yet,” said Jennie. “But we’ll think about it. Maybe that Scorch will find out something.”
“But—really—Mr. Gordon is very kind to me. See how much money he gives me.”
“And perhaps that is only a tithe of what he steals from you.”
“You’re as bad as Scorch,” declared Nancy.
“Well—of course—maybe he is telling the truth, too,” said Jennie. “And twenty dollars at one clip I—Whew!”
Nancy did not tell her that the twenty dollars had paid for the supper Grace and Cora and their friends were enjoying in Number 30 at that very moment.
“But I tell you what,” said Jennie, after a bit, and speaking reflectively.
“Yes?”
“Just give Bob Endress the tip to say nothing to the other girls about how he first met you.”
“Oh!”
“Don’t you see? If Cora and Grace find out where you lived before you came to PinewoodHall, they’ll maybe learn all about you. And perhaps, thatwouldbe bad,” said Jennie, slowly.
“Then you see it too?” asked Nancy, sadly. “They’ll be very sure I am a nobody then.”
“It’s a shame how girls will talk,” admitted Jennie Bruce. “Especially that kind of girls.”
“I wish I hadyoufor a friend, Jennie,” said Nancy, in a whisper.
“Why! you have!” cried the other. “I’ve always wanted to know you better. But the girls think you are offish.”
“I don’t mean to be.”
“No, I see,” returned Jennie. “But I understand you now. I wish you were in this room instead of Sally.”
“And if you only were in Number 30, instead of Cora,” spoke Nancy, out loud.
And upon the very echo of these words, a clear voice demanded:
“And will you tell me, Miss Nelson, how it is thatyouare not in Number 30—your proper dormitory—at this hour of the night?”
Both girls sat up in bed as though worked with the same spring. They could not speak. Madame Schakael stood in the doorway.
CHAPTER XVA GREAT DEAL HAPPENS
The Madame’s doll-like figure has been mentioned before in these chronicles. But to Nancy Nelson’s excited imagination the principal of Pinewood Hall at this juncture seemed to swell—expand—develop—and actually fill the doorway of Number 40, West Side, with her unexpected presence!
Nancy couldn’t speak for the moment. Even the lively Jennie Bruce’s gayety was stifled in her throat.
“I hope you are not stricken dumb, Nancy,” suggested the Madame, in the same low voice.
“Oh, Madame! forgive me!” gasped the culprit at last, and slipped out of bed.
“Where are your robe and slippers?”
“Right here, Madame,” answered the frightened freshman, getting into them in a hurry.
“Well! stand there. Tell me why you are in the wrong room?”
“Oh, it isn’t Jennie’s fault—’deed it isn’t, Madame!” gasped Nancy.
“I am not going to eat you, child,” said the principal of the school, with some exasperation. “Having broken a rule, please stand up properly and answer my questions.
“How came you here, Nancy Nelson?”
“Jennie—Jennie found me crying in the hall.”
“What for?”
“I—I felt bad.”
“You were ill?”
“Oh, no, ma’am,” Nancy hastened to say. “I was not ill at all. Only I was—was lonely—and—and sorry—and——”
“Not altogether clear, Nancy,” said the Madame; but her voice was lower and softer. “Tell me why you were crying in the hall?”
But now Nancy had begun to get a grip upon herself. She realized the position she was in. If she obeyed Madame Schakael’s order she must “tell on” the girls then holding their orgie in Number 30.
“Do you hear me, Nancy?” asked Madame Schakael, firmly.
“Yes, Madame,” whispered the girl.
“Can’t you answer me?”
“No—no, Madame.”
“Why not?”
Nancy was silent for fully a minute, the Madame waiting without a sign of irritation.
“That—that, too, I cannot answer,” said the miserable girl, at last.
“Do you realize what such a refusal means, Nancy?”
“You—you will have to punish me.”
“Seriously.”
“Yes, Madame; seriously.”
“And your record to date has been quite the best of any girl of your class.”
Nancy locked her hands together and gazed at the principal. But she could say nothing.
“You say Jennie Bruce is not to blame?” asked Madame Schakael, after another minute of silence.
“Oh, no, Madame!”
“Oh, dear me!” cried the other girl, “You just don’t understand, Madame——”
Nancy made a pleading gesture to stop her newly-made friend. Madame held up her hand, too.
“I believe what Nancy Nelson says, Miss Bruce,” she observed, gravely. “You shall not be punished.”
“I don’t care for that!” cried the impulsive Jennie. “But Nancy ought not to be punished, either.”
“Will you letmebe the judge of that, Jennie?” asked the Madame, softly.
Jennie was abashed.
“Nancy is out of her room out of hours. That is a fault—a serious fault. You both know that?”
“Yes, Madame,” said the stiff-lipped Nancy, while Jennie began to sob.
“I notice that Jennie’s roommate is not here. When she returns, Nancy, you may go back to your own room. And I shall deal out the same sort of punishment to Sally that I do to you, Nancy.
“And that is,” pursued Madame Schakael, slowly, “that you will be denied recreation, save that which is a part of the school curriculum, until the Christmas recess.”
Nancy said nothing. But she fully understood what it meant. No outdoor runs alone, no skating, nothing save the exercises prescribed by the physical instructor.
“You may wait for Sally’s return. And you are both forbidden to speak of this visit,” the principal said, and withdrew from the room as softly as she had entered it.
“Oh, dear me!” gasped Nancy, “she will catch them all in Number 30.”
“And serve ’em right,” said Jennie.
They waited, expecting to see Jennie’s roommate coming back in a hurry. But there was nodisturbance. The clock at the foot of the main staircases had long since struck eleven. Now it tolled midnight.
Soon there were creaking of doors, faint rustlings in the corridors, giggling half-suppressed, and then the door of Number 40 opened again softly.
“Oh, gee!” exclaimed Sally. “Is shehere?”
“Yes, she is,” replied Jenny, tartly. “What have you got to say against it?”
“Oh, you needn’t be so short, Jennie Bruce,” said Sally.
She slipped out of her wrapper and into her bed. Nancy got up, kissed Jennie warmly, and left the room silently. When she got back to Number 30 Cora was alone. All traces of the spread were hidden.
Cora said never a word; neither did Nancy. But she wondered much. Madame Schakael, she believed, had not hunted out the mystery ofherbeing with Jennie Bruce. Would she and Sally be the only ones punished for this affair?
Morning came and with it the usual assembly in the hall for prayers after breakfast. From the platform Madame Schakael read, without a word of explanation, the names of every girl who had attended Cora’s spread—save Cora herself—and ordered that they be deprived of recreation,as had Nancy, “for being out of their dormitories after hours.” The blow fell like a thunderclap upon the culprits.
When they filed out of the hall to go to first recitation not one of the girls who had been at Number 30 the night before but scowled deadly hatred at poor Nancy.
It would have been useless for Nancy to point out that she, too, had received the same punishment. Circumstances were against the girl who had practically been turned out of her own room while the party was having a glorious time eating salad, macaroons, ice cream, and various other indigestible combinations of “sweeties.”
Cora Rathmore had escaped. How? Her mates did not stop to investigatethatmystery.
If Cora could have explained she did not set about it. Instead, in first recitation, where she sat behind Nancy, she poked her in the back with a needle-like forefinger and hissed:
“You’re a nice one; aren’t you?”
Nancy merely gave her a look, but made no reply.
“Don’t play the innocent. We all know that you went to the Madame and so got square with us.”
“I—did—not!” declared Nancy, sternly.
“Miss Nelson!” exclaimed Miss Maybrick, suddenly.
Nancy whirled around, “eyes front.”
“Demerit—talking in class,” said the teacher.
That was the first time such a thing had happened to Nancy. It did seem as though everything bad was tumbling on top of her at once. She would not look around again when Cora poked her, but kept at her books—or appeared to!
What little joy she had had in school heretofore was all gone now. Lessons dragged; she thought the instructors all looked at her suspiciously.
Just the recreation room in the basement between lessons, or a demure walk with Miss Etching, the physical instructor, over the snowy lawns and wood paths about Pinewood. Extra gym work was denied her, and when the other girls ran with their skates to the river after release from studies, she could only go to Number 30 and mope.
Nancy could not see Bob Endress again.Thatwas something beside a mere provocation of spirit. The girl felt that it was serious.
As Jennie had suggested, she wished to warn Bob to say nothing about where he had met her before. Of course, Grace Montgomery could not see the boy, either. But Cora was free topump Bob, and Nancy was sure her roommate would worm out of him the whole story of how he had first met Nancy.
“He’s been looking for you,” whispered Jennie to Nancy at supper, the first night following the imposition of the punishment. “I saw him skating with Corinne and some of the other big girls. I don’t know whether he saw Cora, or not.”
“Oh, dear, Jennie!” cried Nancy. “I wish you would warn him.”
“I?” exclaimed the other. “I never was introduced to him.”
“Oh!”
“But that wouldn’t make any difference,” declared the fun-loving girl, with a smile. “I’m not afraid of boys; they don’t bite.”
“He’s a real nice boy, I believe,” said Nancy.
“So they all say.”
“And he’d understand, I am sure,” continued Nancy. “If he was only warned what harm his telling might do me——”
“Leave it to me!” cried Jennie. “I’ll skate with him to-morrow—if he’s on the ice.”
Nancy’s life in the school was made far more miserable now by Cora Rathmore and her friends. All these girls, who had enjoyed the spread bought with Nancy’s money, but who had been punishedby the principal, were determined to look upon Nancy as guilty of “telling on them.”
Nor did they give her any chance to answer the charge. Cora would not even speak to her in their room. If any of the other girls came in, Cora said:
“Oh, come over to your room. We can’t talk here, where there is a telltale around.”
This was saidatNancy; but none of them actually addressed her. Besides, Cora began to hint that she knew something against Nancy that she was keeping in reserve.
“Oh, yes! she holds her head up awful proud,” Cora observed in Nancy’s hearing. “But you just wait!”
“Wait for what, Cora?” asked one of the girls.
“Wait till I get a letter. I’ll know all about Miss Telltale soon.”
And after that Nancy’s worst fears were realized by the news that Jennie Bruce brought her. Jennie had managed to see and have a private interview with Bob Endress.
“And of course, he’s managed to do it,” grumbled Jennie.
“Done what? Oh! done what?” cried Nancy, clasping her hands.
“Well, Cora wormed something out of him.He told her how you were the girl who saved him from drowning last summer.”
“Then it’ll all come out!” groaned Nancy.
“That’s according. Cora knows where you lived before you came to Pinewood to school.”
“And she’ll write to Malden. I believe shehasdone so.”
“But perhaps whoever she knows there won’t know you.”
“But they’ll learn about Higbee School, and then they can trace me to it. I know if anybody wrote to Miss Prentice she’d tell all about me. She’d think it her duty.”
“Mean old thing!” declared Jennie.
“Oh, Jennie! it’s going to be awful hard,” said poor Nancy. “You’d better not be too friendly with me. The girls are all bound to look down on me.”
“Don’t be so foolish! Of course they won’t.”
But Nancy shook her head. She had been all through the same trouble so many times before. With every incoming class of new girls at Higbee School it had been the same. She had been “the girl of mystery.”
“If you could only make that old lawyer tell the truth about you, Nance!” exclaimed Jennie.
“But perhaps heistelling the truth.”
“Not much, he isn’t.”
“Why, you’re as bad as Scorch O’Brien,” declared Nancy, with half a smile.
“That boy’s got some brains, all right,” observed Jennie, quickly. “It does not sound reasonable that, during all these years, Mr. Gordon would not have probed into the matter and learned something about your real antecedents.”
Nancy shook her head, slowly. “It may all be true. Maybe it is just kind-heartedness that has kept him acting as intermediary between the persons who furnish money for my education, and myself.”
“And why does he tip you so generously?”
“Oh—er—Well, I don’t know.”
“Is that out of his own pocket, do you think?” asked the shrewd Jennie.
“Well——”
“Does this ‘Old Gordon,’ as your friend Scorch calls him, really seem like a man given to outbursts of charity, Nance?”
“Why—why, I never saw him but once,” replied Nancy.
“But did he impress you as being of a philanthropic nature?” urged her friend.
“No-oo.”
“I thought not,” observed Jennie. “Just because Scorch reminded him of your existence wasn’t likely to make him send you money. I bethe handles plenty more belonging to you that you never see.”
“But see to what an expensive school he has sent me!” cried Nancy.
“Maybe he was obliged to do so. Perhaps he only does just what he is told to do, after all. There may be somebody behind Mr. Gordon, who is watching both him and you.”
“My goodness! You make it all more mysterious than it was before,” sighed Nancy. “Just the same, if these girls learn all about me they’ll spread it around that I’m just a foundling, and that nobody knows anything about me. It is going to be dreadfully hard.”
“Now, you pluck up your spirit, Nance Nelson!” commanded Jennie Bruce. “Don’t be so milk-and-watery. You’re just as good as they are.”
“I don’t know. At least, my folks may not have been as good astheirfolks.”
“Well, I’d never let ’em guess it,” cried Jennie. “You’re scared before you are hurt, Nance; that’s what is the matter with you.”
CHAPTER XVIIT COMES TO A HEAD
Jennie Bruce was just as full of good humor as she could be. She may have lacked reverence for teachers, precedent, the dignity of the seniors, and honored custom; but nobody with a normal mind could really be angry with her.
Her deportment marks were dreadfully low; but she was quick at her studies and was really too kind-hearted tomeanto bother the teachers.
She managed to get in and out of a dozen scrapes a day. Yet the rollicking good-nature of the girl, and her frank honesty did much to save her from serious punishment.
Jennie went on her care-free way, assured in her own mind that certain of the rules of Pinewood Hall were only made to be broken. If a thought came to her in class, or a desire to communicate with another scholar, she could no more resist the temptation than she could fly.
“Miss Bruce! half an hour this afternoon on grammar rules for talking!”
“Oh, Miss Maybrick! I’m so sorry. I didn’t think.”
“Learn to think, then.”
“Jennie, if youmustmake such faces, please do so out of the view of your classmates, I beg.” This from gentle Miss Meader.
“I—I was just trying how it felt to be strangled with a cord. It says here theThuggeedid it in India as a religious practice.”
“That’s enough, Jennie!” as a giggle arose from the roomful of girls. “Your excuses are worse than your sins.”
And her thirst for knowledge! Of course, it was a desire for information that was by no possibility of any value to either herself or the class.
“Is this sentence good English, Miss Halliday?” asked Jennie, after scribbling industriously for some minutes, and then reading from her paper: “‘A girl was criticised by her teacher for the use of the word “that,” but it was proved that that “that” that that girl used was that “that” that that girl should have used.’ Is that right?”
“That is perfectly correct, Jennie,” said the English teacher, grimly, when the class had come to order, “butyouare altogether wrong. You may show me that sentence written plainly forty times when you come to the class to-morrow.”
“Zowie!” murmured Jennie in Nancy’s ear as they were excused. “I bet she thought that hurt.”
But the ingenious Jennie had recourse to a typewriter in one of the offices which the girls could use if they wished. She put in forty slips of tissue paper, with carbon sheets between each two, and wrote the troublesome sentence on all forty slips at once!
“You know very well this was not what I meant when I gave you the task, Jennie,” commented Miss Halliday, yet having hard work not to smile.
“You particularly said to write it plainly,” returned the demure Jennie. “And what could be plainer than typewriting?”
These jokes, and their like, made her beloved by a certain number of the girls, amused the others, and sometimes bothered her teachers a good deal.
But there was not a girl in all Pinewood Hall who would have been of such help to Nancy Nelson at this juncture as Jennie Bruce.
When Jennie was out of the building in recreation time, Nancy either kept close in Number 30, or crept away to some empty office and conned her lesson books industriously.
When Jennie was at hand Nancy began to see that she need fear little trouble from the Montgomeryclique. They were all afraid of Jennie’s sharp tongue. And after Cora had tried to be nasty to Nancy before a crowd a couple of times, and Jennie had turned the laugh against her, Nancy’s enemies learned better.
But one noon Grace Montgomery received a letter which, after reading, she passed around among her particular friends. It was eagerly read, especially by Cora Rathmore.
That young lady immediately walked over to Nancy, who was sitting alone reading, and she shook the letter in the surprised girl’s face.
“Now I’ve got you, Miss!” she fairly hissed.
Nancy looked up, startled, but could not speak.
“Now we know where you came from, and what and who you are, Nancy Nelson!” pursued Cora. “A girl like you—a nobody—a foundling—Oh! I’ll see if I have got to associate with suchscum!”
She wheeled sharply away, and had Nancy recovered her powers of speech she would have had no time to reply to this tirade.
But Nancy could not have spoken just then to save her life! The blow had fallen at last. All she had feared since coming to Pinewood Hall was now about to be realized.
In some way Grace Montgomery had learned the particulars of her early life at Higbee School,though Cora might not have found it out, and Grace had put the letter into the hands of Nancy’s roommate.
What Cora would first do poor Nancy did not know. There would be some terrible “blowup” the girl was sure. The story would spread all over the school. All the girls must know that she was a mere nobody, apparently dependent upon charity for her education and even for her food.
Oh! if she could only escape from it all—run away from Pinewood—go somewhere so far, or so hidden, that none of these proud girls coming from rich families could ever find and taunt her with her own miserable story.
Yes, Nancy thought earnestly that afternoon of running away. Any existence, it seemed to her then, would be better than suffering the unkind looks and the doubtful whispers of her school companions.
Nancy was not afraid of ordinary things. The possibility of hunger and cold did not daunt her. She knew that, if she left the school secretly, and ran away and found a place to work, she might often be in need. But if she could only go where people would not ask questions!
She was quite as old as Scorch O’Brien, she thought. And see how independent that flame-hairedyoungster was! Nancy knew she could take care of herself alone in the city as well as Scorch. She had enough money left to get her to Cincinnati, and something over.
How she got through her lessons after dinner she never knew; but she did, somehow. Then she crept up to her dormitory and to her delight found it empty. She gathered together a few of her simplest possessions and crammed them into her handbag. She took only those things that would not be at once missed. She touched nothing on her bureau.
When she had locked the bag she opened the window and peered out. It was already growing dark; but far away, on the frozen river, she could hear the ring of skates and the silvery shouts of laughter from the girls.
Nobody stirred in the pinewood, nor in the shrubbery closer to the Hall. Nancy waited for a minute to see if she was observed, and then she tossed the bag into the middle of a clump of bushes not far from her window.
She believed nobody had seen her. She closed the sash and picked up her cap and coat. She rolled these into as small and compact a bundle as possible and then left the room quietly.
Corinne Pevay was coming through the corridor.
“Hullo, Nancy Nelson!” she said, cheerfully, putting her hand upon the younger girl’s shoulder. “What did you want to be such a perfect little brick for?”
“I—I don’t know what you mean?” quoth Nancy, shrinking under the senior’s touch.
“Why, if you’d told Madame Schakael all about it the other night when she caught you in Number 40, do you suppose she would have punished you so harshly?”
“I—I couldn’t tell on them,” murmured Nancy, trying to hide her bundle.
“No. But what good did it do to try and save girls like Montgomery? They blame you, just the same.”
Nancy nodded, but said nothing.
“ButIknow that you didn’t tell on them; and so does Jennie Bruce. Madame Schakael learned the names of the culprits by going from door to door and finding out who were absent from their rooms. She did not have to go to Number 30 at all. And you got no thanks for trying to shield them.”
Nancy continued silent.
“And one of them toldme,” said Corinne, pointedly, “thatyoupaid for all those goodies they gorged themselves on; yet they froze you out of the party. Is that right?”
“Oh, I—I’d rather not say, Miss Pevay,” stammered Nancy.
“Humph! Well, you’re a funny kid,” said the senior, leaving her. “You’ll never get along in this girls’ menagerie if you let ’em walk all over you.”
Nancy had been afraid that Corinne would go to the lower floor with her. But when the bigger girl left her, she slipped down the stairs like a streak and ran for the rear door of the West Side.
She saw nobody. The lower corridors seemed empty. She reached the unlocked door and had her hand upon the knob. Indeed, she turned the knob and pulled the door toward her.
The cold evening air blew in upon her face. It was the Breath of the Wide World—that world that lay before her if she left the shelter of Pinewood Hall and the bitterness of her life here.
And then, for the first time, a thought struck her. She had been forbidden to leave the building, save at stated times with the physical instructor, until the Christmas holidays, which were three weeks away.
Madame Schakael had bound her, on her honor, to remain a prisoner in the Hall until the ban of displeasure should be lifted. She had tacitly promised to obey, and therefore the Madame had set no spy upon Nancy’s footsteps. There wasno watching of the girls suffering under punishment. That was not the system of Pinewood Hall and its mistress.
How could Nancy break her word to Madame Schakael? Never had the Madame spoken otherwise than kindly to her. Even when she meted out punishment to her, Nancy knew that the punishment was just. The Madame could have done no less.
The principal had not even urged Nancy to report her schoolmates on the night of the party at Number 30, West Side. She had accepted her statement, as far as it went, as perfectly honest, too. She had not punished Jennie Bruce.
“Why, Ican’trun away and make Madame Schakael trouble!” gasped Nancy, closing the door again softly and crouching there in the dark hallway. “Mr. Gordon might make her trouble. Besides—I’ve promised.”
The girl was much shaken by her fear of what cruelty Cora Rathmore and Grace Montgomery would mete out to her. Yet she could not play what seemed to her mind a “mean trick” upon the doll-like principal who had been so kind to her.
“Oh, dear me! I can’t go—I can’t go!” moaned Nancy Nelson. “It wouldn’t be right. Madame Schakael said I wasn’t to go out——”
And then she remembered the bag she hadtossed out of the window. She must have that bag back, if she wasn’t going away. If it remained there over night perhaps Mr. Pease, or Samuel, would find it.
And then the story would all come out, and her position in the school would be worse!
But Nancy knew that she had no right to leave the building at this particular time. That was the plain understanding, that recreation hours should be spent within the Hall, unless Miss Etching invited her to join a walking party.
The physical instructor was now down on the ice with the girls. Nancy might have asked one of the other teachers for permission to step out for just a minute; but that would entail much explanation.
The brush clump into which she had thrown her bag was around the farther corner of the wing. And just then she heard laughing and talking as the first group from the river approached the Hall.
Ah! there was Jennie. Nancy identified her jolly laugh and chatter immediately. She could trust Jennie. Jennie would slip around the house and bring in the fatal bag secretly, and keep still about it.
So Nancy kept back in the dark hall and let the troop of laughing girls pass her without saying aword. Jennie came last and Nancy seized her arm.
“Goodness to gracious and eight hands around!” gasped Jennie. “How you startled me. Is it you, Nancy?”
“Hush! Yes.”
“Well, what’s the matter? Whose old cat is dead now?” demanded Jennie, in an equally low voice.
“I—I threw my bag out of the window, Jennie. Will you get it?” whispered the excited girl.
“Your bag?”
“Yes, yes!”
“What under the sun did you do it for?”
“I—I can’t tell you here,” whispered Nancy.
“What have you gotthere?” demanded Jennie, suddenly, pulling at the bundle under the other girl’s arm.
“My—my coat.”
“And your hat?”
“Ye—yes.”
“Oh, you little chump! You are starting to run away!”
“No, I’m not.”
“But you thought of it?”
“Oh, Jennie! I don’t see how Icanstay here. Cora and Grace know everything.”
“I know it—nasty cats! But I’d face ’em.There’s nothing to be ashamed of,” declared Jennie. But she said it a little weakly. She knew that many of the girls would be just foolish enough to follow the lead of the Montgomery girl and Cora Rathmore.
“I—I’vegotto face ’em, I suppose,” murmured Nancy. “I just thought that I couldn’t run away.”
“Huh! why not?” asked her friend, curiously.
“Because Madame Schakael put me on my honor not to leave the Hall in recreation hours without permission.”
“Oh! goodness!” gasped Jennie. Then she burst out laughing, rocking herself to and fro, doubled up in the darkness of the hallway.
“What a delightful kid you are, Nance!” she cried, at last. “And you threw your handbag, all packed, out of the window?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I’ll go get it. But you certainlywillbe the death of me!” cried Jennie, and opened the door again.
“Oh! I’ll thank you so much,” whispered Nancy.
“Go on upstairs and put that coat and hat away,” ordered Jennie, with sudden gruffness. “You’re no more fit to roam this wild desert of boarding-school life alone than a baby in longclothes! Run, now!” and Jennie darted out of the door.
But it was easier to say than to do! When Nancy stole back into the main hall there were a dozen girls, at least, gathered there waiting for the supper gong. And among them were some of those who had, all the time, treated Nancy with the least consideration.
Nancy dropped her gaze, so as not to see their unpleasant looks, and stole toward the stairway with her bundle. But suddenly Cora’s sharp voice halted her. She had not seen Cora at first.
“Yes! there she goes up to our room.That’sthe girlIhave to room with. But I’m going to tell Madame Schakael right now that I sha’n’t do so any longer.”
Nancy’s head came up and she flushed and paled. The lash of Cora’s words roused her temper as it had been roused once before. Yet all she said in reply to the cruel speech was:
“Why can’t you let me alone, Cora Rathmore?”
“I’ll let you alone!” repeated Cora, with a shrill laugh. “I guess I will. And every othernicegirl will let you alone, Miss Nelson. Don’t be afraid that you’ll be worried by friends here. We all know what you are now.”
Nancy had reached the foot of the stairs andwas starting up. She whirled suddenly to face her tormentor. The coat and cap fell from her grasp. She clenched her hands tightly and cried:
“Then whatamI, Cora? What have I done that makes me so bad in your eyes? What have you got against me?”
“You’re a nobody. You came from a charity school. The woman who is principal doesn’t know where you came from. Your parents may be in jail for all anybody knows,” returned Cora.
“You haven’t any people, and you stayed in that Higbee School at Maiden all the year round—vacations and all. The girls didn’t like you there any more than they do here.
“Ha! Miss Nobody from No-place-at-all! that’s what you are!” sneered Nancy’s roommate. “How do you expect the nice girls here at Pinewood Hall will want to associate with you?
“And let me tell you, Miss, thatIrefuse to room with you another day. I shall tell Madame Schakael so right now!” concluded Cora, her face very red and her black eyes flashing angrily.