Nan Sherwood at Lakeview Hall; Or, The Mystery of the Haunted Boathouse

Did they never study or work? Was it all fun and adventure at Lakeview Hall? No, no, indeed! There was plenty of work, and Nan Sherwood, with Bess Harley and her other friends, said they were “actually worked to death” by some of the teachers. For the very reason that they did do so much, their minds in hours of relaxation turned to such frolics as this one planned at the haunted boathouse.

Mademoiselle Loro was a little, dried, winter-leaf Frenchwoman, as quick and active as a cat and with beadlike black eyes, more like a bird’s than those of a human being.

Mademoiselle Loro fairly slaved to make stubborn and careless girls attain a Parisian accent.

“And about all we get from the poor old dear,” Laura said, “is a Paris-Kentucky accent and an ability to shrug our shoulders. Goodness! she’s got me doing that, too.”

As for the German teacher, Frau Deuseldorf, she was of a different type entirely. A tall, formidable looking woman was Frau Deuseldorf, with a magnificent air, no waistline, and a wart on her nose. Nan, whenever she stood before the good lady, never could see anything of the teacher’s face save that unfortunate blemish.

Perhaps the teacher whom the girls as a whole disliked the most was Professor Krenner. He was a martinet in mathematics; whereas Nan found him a most lovable and delightful instructor in architectural drawing. It finally became a regular practice for the architectural drawing class to attend the professor’s lecture at his own cabin, one afternoon a week. And these afternoons were most delightfully spent.

Nan did not go alone. She had interested in the study another girl, and oddly enough that was “Procrastination Boggs.” Amelia Boggs, from Wauhegan, was certainly peculiar; but Nan had learned to like her very quickly.

Amelia told Nan all about the clocks and watches. Her father owned a store in Wauhegan, which had been let to a jeweler and clock-dealer. Mr. Boggs could not collect his rent, and Amelia undertook to do so. The clock-dealer had no money, but he offered to pay his rent out of his stock-in-trade.

“I took him up on that, for Pop was too easy,” explained Amelia, “and I went through his shop, looked at the price-tags, and picked out enough clocks and watches to fill a wheelbarrow. My brother Johnny wheeled ’em home. We sold some, and I expected to sell some of these I brought with me. But the girls think it’s such a joke I’ll never be able to get rid of ’em. Never mind. It only makes ’em laugh, so where’s the harm?”

That they laughed at her and her peculiarities, did not bother Amelia. With Nan and her friends, the girl from Wauhegan was happy; and if she did not get along very fast in some of her studies, it was not so serious a matter. Amelia was delighted to get down into the kitchen (she had bribed the cook with a clock) and there she concocted little dishes, some of which found their way to Dr. Prescott’s table.

“Mercy on us!” said the preceptress, laughing. “Amelia will have me start a course in domestic science; and that is not what their parents have sent these girls to my school for.”

However, once enlisted in the cause of Nan’s banquet in the haunted boathouse, Amelia Boggs became very helpful. It was she who borrowed tablecloths and napkins from the cook for use at the feast. Henry kept the door of the unused part of the boathouse locked, only to be opened when Nan and Bess and Amelia went there to make final preparations for the banquet on the afternoon of the day selected.

They laid the cloths, trimmed and filled the hanging lamp, and laid the fire ready to light. Then the key of the door was entrusted to Walter Mason and he ran around into Freeling port in his motor boat just before supper.

Nan thought Linda Riggs and Cora Courtney had been lingering about the boathouse, listening and peeping; but she did not suspect these girls, disagreeable and objectionable as they were, would be mean enough to tell any teacher about the proposed banquet.

“I suppose they are only wondering if we are to have a finer spread than they will have at their banquet,” Nan said to Bess.

“I just hate their snooping around so,” grumbled Bess.

Soon after supper Walter telephoned to his sister from their own house that all was well. He had delivered the goods at the boathouse and, with the help of the Masons’ gardener, had carried everything into the unused part of the building, as agreed. The key had been left in a secret corner known only to himself and Nan, and—he wished the girls good luck!

Nan and her friends were all excitement that evening. Not much preparation was made for the following day’s tasks. Had Mrs. Cupp not been very busy about her own affairs, she would surely have noticed that some of her charges were in a great flutter.

Miss Sadie Vane, Mrs. Cupp’s sister, had come to see her on this evening, and in great excitement again. As soon as the matron was relieved of her supper duties she put on her wraps and left for the village with Miss Vane.

This relieved the minds of Nan and Bess not a little. They ran down to the boathouse and found the key. But Bess utterly refused to go in without a light, and without the other girls for company.

“Oh, all right,” said Nan. “I guess everything is safe. And all of the girls are so afraid of the place after dark that if they could get in they would not dare.”

The evening dragged by. Curfew rang and still Mrs. Cupp did not return. Heavy-footed Susan went up through the corridors and looked to the lowering of the lights. Then she returned and the older girls were left to themselves—supposedly for the night.

“When the cat’s away the mice can play.” It was then figures stole out of certain rooms, and along the corridors, and down the stairs. A rear door had been unchained. One by one the softly flitting figures gathered in the back garden.

There was a wan moon to give them light enough to find the way to the foot of the bluff. But it was a ghostly moon, too, and aided objects along the way in casting weird shadows. May Winslow clung close to Nan and Bess. Grace and Lillie made up the rest of the trembling group who looked to Nan for comfort and support. Laura Polk and “Procrastination Boggs” brought up a more or less courageous rear. In between were girls in all stages of excitement, from a state of hysterical fear to equally hysterical laughter.

They came finally to the foot of the long flight of steps and Nan marshalled her forces. “Now, girls, pluck up your spirits. Close ranks! Forward—march!” she commanded.

“Wha—what’s that?” quavered Lillie Nevin.

“Oh! oh!” from Grace.

“Now, you sawneys!” called the red-haired girl from the rear. “Behave! Don’t try to give us all a conniption fit.”

“What’s that?” demanded one of the other girls.

“Huh! are you seeing things, too?” cried Amelia.

“No. What kind of a fit is a ‘conniption’?”

“Don’t know,” admitted Laura. “But I’ve heard my grandmother from New England speak familiarly of ’em. What’s the matter up front?”

“Oh, Lil and Grace are balking,” declared Nan, with disgust. “Do come on, children. I have an electric lamp. We sha’n’t be entirely in the dark.”

“I—I saw something,” quavered the flaxen-haired Lillie.

“Oh!” gasped Bess, more than a little inclined herself to be panic-stricken.

“Do come along!” urged Nan.

“There it is!” squealed Grace, suddenly.

Half the girls thought they saw the black figure dart around the corner of the building; the other half were looking in an entirely different direction at the moment. But all together emitted a chorused:

“Oh!”

“For pity’s sake, girls!” gasped Nan. “Don’t!”

“It’s the ghost! the black ghost!” quavered May Winslow, groveling in the very depths of superstition.

“It’s a black dog!” ejaculated Amelia Boggs. “I reckon there aren’t any canine ghosts; are there, Nan?”

The laugh which followed this sally broke the spell of superstition that had clutched some of the girls. Laughter drove away even the fears of May, Lillie and Grace. Bess swallowed hard and laughed, too; but she pinched Nan’s arm as she whispered:

“It was that black thing we saw before in the boathouse, Nan.”

“All right. Keep it to yourself,” urged her chum.

“What are you two whispering about?” complained May. “You didn’t get us down here to try to frighten us to death, did you?”

“We’re going to give you all a good time, if you’ll let us,” laughed Nan, cheerfully. “Come on, girls! If we spend so much time outside the boathouse, somebody will be sure to see us.”

“And think we’re a whole troop of ghosts,” chuckled Laura Polk. “Lead on, Macduff!”

“That’s not my middle name, but I’ll lead,” returned Nan promptly, and this time she succeeded in reaching the side door of the boathouse. She drew forth the electric flashlight and pointed it at the lock, so she could see to insert the key.

“Hurry up!” cried Laura, from the rear. “I’m starved to death right now.”

“And it’s only ten o’clock,” somebody else said. “How can that be?”

“I didn’t eat any supper,” confessed the red-haired girl, unblushingly. “I knew Nan and Bess would supply something better.”

“If it’s all here,” Nan said, as the door swung open.

“Goodness! don’t suggest that any of those goodies have been stolen!” cried another girl.

“Maybe that black dog has been in the pantry,” chuckled Bess.

“No laughing matter,” Laura said. “Look quick, Nancy, dear.”

Nan entered in the lead. She flashed her spot light about the big room. There was the row of ice-cream tubs. One of them had its cover off and some of the ice was scattered on the floor. On the other side of the room were the hampers. The covers had been wrenched off two of them and a raid made upon the food they contained.

“Who’s been ahead of us?” cried Nan.

“Goodness—gracious—Agnes!” murmured Amelia Boggs.

“Oh! don’t tell me you’ve been robbed!” was the horrified cry of the red-haired girl.

Nan paid little attention to the rifled ice-cream container. She hurried to the hampers. One had been filled with individual salads, each in its paper box. The other had held chicken and anchovy sandwiches.

Several salad containers lay empty on the floor and more had disappeared entirely—been carried away by the thief, or thieves. At least a couple of dozen sandwiches must have been abstracted.

“Goodness!” wailed Bess, right at her chum’s shoulder. “What an appetite!”

“For a ghost, I—should—say!” agreed May Winslow.

But Nan did not feel that the occasion was at all funny. This was downright thievery. And she felt quite sure that she knew who had done it.

“That mean, mean Linda Riggs!” whispered Nan to Bess.

“Do you really think so?” breathed her chum.

“Who else could it be?” returned Nan, with an emphatic nod. But that was all she said at the time. She hurried to light the big lamp and make the girls welcome. At least the discovered raid on the viands served to banish all fear of the boathouse ghost. Ghosts certainly do not have an appetite for chocolate ice-cream, tuna-fish salad, and chicken sandwiches.

“Start the fire—do, Amelia,” begged Nan. “Set the plates and knives and forks, Bess. Make yourselves at home, girls. Don’t be afraid of starving, Laura. There’s loads to eat left.”

“My mind is relieved by that assurance,” said the red-haired girl with a sigh.

Nan had seen to it that each window was curtained and every crevice stopped, so that no light could shine out and play traitor. But the fact that the store of food had been raided disturbed her mind not a little. If Linda Riggs and her chums (for of course the conceited, self-assertive girl did not make the raid alone), played one mean trick, they might another. They might report to some teacher or to Mrs. Cupp, what was going on in the boathouse.

Nan began to realize now that this banquet giving was rather a risky thing. The girls all did it, and it was considered a forgivable offence against Dr. Prescott’s rules; but of course the principal desired that the rule against eating after hours should be obeyed, or else she would not have made the regulation.

Nan was rather sorry she had yielded to Bess Harley’s suggestion and arranged this banquet. But now being given over heart and hand to the affair, Nan did all she could to make the entertainment a success.

At this distance from the Hall the girls felt free to let their tongues run, and to laugh and chatter to their hearts’ content.

“Oh!” cried May Winslow, “this party is lots nicer than any we ever had in our rooms, for here we do not have to set a watch for Mrs. Cupp, or be so careful how we breathe.”

“Only we should set a sentinel on guard against ghosts, May,” suggested Laura, wickedly. “That should be your job, honey.”

“How mean of you!” squealed May. “I had all but forgotten that horrid black thing we saw.”

“It is the ghost of some poor old slave your grandfather owned, Winslow,” said one girl. “That is, if it really is a black ghost.”

“He wouldn’t haunt me,” returned May, who was from Alabama. “I’m not afraid of any negro, alive or dead! Grandfather Mullin was awfully kind to all his people, and they all loved him. They didn’t feel themselves slaves. Our own forefathers were held in bondage by the lords and barons over in England, four or five hundred years ago.”

“Oh, say! don’t start anything like that here,” begged Amelia. “We get enough history I should hope, from Mr. Bonner.”

“Right-oh!” yawned Laura, lazily. “Let good fellowship flow with that cocoa that already smells so good; and as we set to work upon the more stable viands——”

“Here! Hold on!” cried Bess. “What are ‘stable viands’? Oats and corn. One would think we were horses.”

Just then Nan made the announcement: “Ladies, supper is served.” And at that very moment, as the girls crowded to the table and Amelia began to pour the steaming drink, there came a resounding knock upon the door.

“The ghost!” gasped a number of the girls in awed chorus.

“If it is,” said Nan Sherwood, vigorously, as the summons was repeated, “he is in full possession of his health and strength.”

“It’s something worse than a ghost,” agreed Laura Polk, grabbing several sandwiches and enveloping them in the folds of her sweater. “But I vow I shall not be cheated out of all my supper.”

Nobody started for the door for fully a minute, and within that time the knocking was repeated three times. It was not only an imperious rapping; it was plainly inspired by some excitement.

“My goodness!” Amelia Boggs murmured. “That ghost’s in an awful hurry.”

“He’s hungry, maybe,” giggled one girl.

“He can’t be, if he ate all that he stole before we got here,” Bess declared.

Only Nan was silent. She suspected at once what the commanding summons meant. It was a teacher, perhaps Dr. Prescott herself. The party was a failure and all the girls whom she had invited would, with herself and chum, be punished for the frolic.

As she slowly approached the door, a voice from outside faintly reached her ear: “Let me in! open the door!”

Nan was astonished by this. It sounded like somebody in distress. She hurriedly turned the bolt and opened the door a little way. There was a keen wind blowing off the water and the garments of the person on the doorstep fluttered in it, so that Nan knew at once it was a woman; but she could not see her face.

“Who is it?” whispered Nan, while the other truants held their breath.

“For goodness’ sake, let me in, child!” exclaimed a vexed voice and the woman pushed by, slamming the door when once she was inside. It did not need the black veil jerked up over her hat to assure the girls assembled that Mrs. Cupp was under the veil!

“Good-night!” murmured Laura, falling dramatically into May Winslow’s arms. “‘All is lost!’ the captain shouted.”

“Sh-h!” gasped the girl from Alabama. “Don’t make her mad.”

“I couldn’t,” declared the irrepressible. “She was born that way.”

But suddenly Nan, as well as some of the other girls, saw that the stern matron of Lakeview Hall had been crying. Her cheeks were tear-stained and she was still sobbing convulsively as she leaned, exhausted, with her back against the door.

Nan was instantly sympathetic, and cried aloud: “What is the matter, Mrs. Cupp? What has happened?”

“I—I’m so frightened,” stammered the lady.

“Oh!” whispered Lillie, shrilly. “She’s seen the ghost.”

“My goodness!” moaned May, almost letting the red-haired girl fall to the floor.

But the latter, after all, was the one who rose to the occasion. Even Nan was too amazed to appreciate properly the fact that for once Mrs. Cupp was in a melting mood.

“Give her a chair, Nan, do!” cried Laura, bestirring herself briskly. “Something has surely upset her. The poor dear! Wish we had a cup of hot tea. But this chocolate is the next best thing to it.”

She poured a brimming cup and brought it to Mrs. Cupp, who had been seated at the long table. Before taking the first swallow the lady waved her hand toward the door.

“Lock it!” she gasped.

“It is locked,” Nan promptly assured her.

“You can bet it is!” exclaimed the crafty Laura. “We don’t want anybody coming in here who will tell on us,” she added significantly.

Mrs. Cupp must have heard this, for she flushed as she drank the hot chocolate in great gulps. Or, perhaps, it was only the color coming back into her face, after her fright.

Nan asked, with real feeling: “What was it scared you so, Mrs. Cupp?”

“I—I don’t know,” stammered the matron.

“But it must have been something?”

“I’m not sure even of that,” was Mrs. Cupp’s rather disconcerting reply.

“It was the ghost, then!” shrilled Lillie.

“Oh!” gasped Grace, and the two timid ones clung together in alarm and despair.

“Oh, shucks!” exclaimed Amelia Boggs. “It won’t break the door down to get in here, so don’t be afraid.”

“I never was so frightened in my life,” declared Mrs. Cupp, drinking the last drop of the comforting liquid. “Never!”

“Do tell us all about it, Mrs. Cupp,” urged the red-haired girl, hovering about the excited lady. “And have another cup of chocolate; do!”

“Thank you,” replied Mrs. Cupp, with real gratitude.

“Come, girls,” said the bustling Laura. “The chocolate’s all hot. Don’t let it spoil. And the sandwiches and salad must be eaten to be saved. Pull up your chairs. Won’t you try this lovely salad, Mrs. Cupp? And these chicken sandwiches are delicious.”

Mrs. Cupp was fairly caught. She had partaken of the hospitality of the forbidden feast. Having accepted the chocolate she made but weak protest against the heartier viands. A delightfully arranged plateful appeared like magic before her and she found a fork in her hand.

Bess was almost bursting with suppressed laughter, and even Nan had difficulty in keeping a straight face. Laura Polk had certainly stepped into the breach. “She deserves a leather medal,” whispered May Winslow.

“I’ll give her one of my clocks,” promised Amelia.

The girls gathered quietly about the long table and the food began to disappear. Perhaps they were not quite as hilarious as they expected to be at the feast; but Mrs. Cupp’s presence did not make the viands any the less delicious to the palate. And all of the girls were anxious to hear the tale of the matron’s fright.

“What could it have been you saw?” May asked.

“I—I don’t know. Something black,” was the sober reply.

“O-o-o!” from Grace and Lillie. “All black?”

“Did it look like a black dog?” asked Nan, the practical.

“I declare! it might have been,” Mrs. Cupp said, with some relief. “Of course,” she added, with sudden suspicion, “you girls didn’t have anybody on watch outside?”

“No. We were too scatterbrained for that,” laughed Laura.

“And we did not think our light could be seen through any crack,” added Nan.

“It couldn’t,” Mrs. Cupp said promptly.

“How—how did you know we were here, then?” blurted out Bess.

“Ahem! I knew. That is sufficient,” said Mrs. Cupp, more in her usual tone.

Then it was true. Nan knew that somebody had played traitor. Mrs. Cupp had been told of the party in the haunted boathouse by some jealous girl, or she would never have come back to the Hall from the village by the shore road. It was a roundabout way, and lonely.

“The road was very dark,” explained the still excited matron. “When I came to the big boulder just the other side of the boat landing, something sprang out of the bushes and chased me. It was black, and looked like a man or boy, only it was on four legs—or its hands and knees.”

“Maybe it was a dog,” said Bess, doubtfully.

“‘The black dog Remorse,’ no less!” whispered Laura to Nan. “It was the ‘black dog’ of Mrs. Cupp’s conscience, I guess.”

“Hush!” returned Nan. She was worried by the happening. The raid on their feast, the information evidently lodged about their frolic with Mrs. Cupp, and this “black thing” that had startled them all, seemed to be all parts of a plot.

“And it chased me!” Mrs. Cupp went on. “I declare, I never was so frightened in all my life! It chased me right to this door——”

“It really was lucky we were here, then, wasn’t it?” put in Laura, to clinch the point.

Mrs. Cupp bit into a chicken sandwich, and frowned. “I don’t know about that,” she said slowly. “I never would have come back by the shore road if I hadn’t heard of what you girls were doing here. I don’t know but that I consider you are the cause of my being so frightened,” she concluded grimly.

Mrs. Cupp proved that she possessed a hearty appetite, and that the fright she had suffered had not impaired it. She accepted a second helping of salad and two plates of ice-cream followed, with several fancy cakes.

“I must say,” she observed, in a more cordial mood than any of the girls had ever seen her display before. “I must say that whoever chose these refreshments showed more regard for your digestions than usually is the case in such midnight feasts. And as I remember my own schooldays, we never had anything on such occasions that was really fit for a girl to put in her stomach.”

“Oh, Mrs. Cupp!” exclaimed Laura, “did you really have parties like this when you were a girl at boarding school?”

“I was just saying, Laura, that they were not like this,” returned the matron. “But schoolgirls are all alike, if banquets are not.”

The girls giggled at that retort. It did seem funny to hear Mrs. Cupp joke, in even the grimmest manner.

But Mrs. Cupp was rapidly recovering from her softer mood. Laura said afterward that if it took a ghost-fright to make Mrs. Cupp “livable,” if the matron were threatened with the guillotine, for instance, she might really be good company while the effect of the announcement of the coming tragedy lasted.

“I want to know who the guilty party is,” said the Lakeview Hall matron. “Who got up this party, and who paid for it?”

“I’m the guilty one,” said Nan, promptly. “I must be held solely responsible.”

“Oh, no, she is not alone responsible. I helped,” cried Bess, “and if Nan is to be punished, I ought to be, too.”

“And so did I,” Amelia put in. “T’won’t be fair for only one to be punished.”

“And you know,” said the red-haired girl, with saucy significance, “we all helped eat Nan’s lovely supper.”

“Ahem! I see the point, Laura,” Mrs. Cupp observed. “But it does not change the facts. A rule of the Hall has been broken—flagrantly broken. That you girls fled away to this spot for your reprehensible act adds to the offence. We are responsible to your parents and guardians for your health and safety. The result of an escapade like this nobody can foretell. Something might have happened in this old boathouse to harm you girls and bring ill-repute to the Hall.”

The party of school-law breakers looked rather solemn. Mrs. Cupp folded the napkin she had used and brushed the crumbs from her black broadcloth skirt.

“Nothing excuses an infraction of the rules. But I am inclined to show leniency to everybody but the prime mover in this affair. And that is——”

“Me!” gasped Bess Harley. “Nan would never have thought of having a supper but for me.”

“But I chose this place for it, and it was my money paid for it,” cried Nan.

“How much did it cost?” asked Mrs. Cupp, briskly.

“More than twenty-five dollars,” confessed Nan, blushing.

“Mercy on us! What extravagance!” cried the matron. “You shall be punished for that, if for nothing else, Nancy Sherwood,” and she got up quickly. “Now, girls, is there anything left?”

“Some cream and cake, Mrs. Cupp,” Amelia promptly announced.

“Take it up to the Hall for Susan and the other maids,” ordered the matron. “Miss Sherwood, Miss Harley, Miss Polk and Miss Boggs may come down here some time to-morrow and clean up. I will speak to Dr. Prescott about the punishment to be meted out to the chief offender. She will be vexed about it, I have no doubt.”

Laura sidled up to her as the matron prepared to set forth with the truants for the Hall, and whispered:

“But wasn’t that mayonnaise lovely, Mrs. Cupp?”

“You cannot cajole me, Miss Polk,” the matron said.

This speech gave the fun-makers a feeling of dejection. Most of them did not know how clear Dr. Prescott’s sense of justice was. It looked as though Nan Sherwood was in for a lot of trouble. And she had given them such a delightful supper!

It so troubled their minds that even the timid ones thought no more of “the black dog” as they filed out of the boathouse. Nan locked the door, and she and Mrs. Cupp came in the rear as the whole party scuttled up the long flight of steps to the brow of the bluff. Mrs. Cupp walked slowly and leaned upon Nan’s arm.

“Don’t you know who that was out there in the bushes, Nancy?” the school matron asked.

“No, Mrs. Cupp,” declared Nan. “Only I know it couldn’t be a ghost.”

“How about Grace Mason’s brother?”

“Walter?” cried Nan, in surprise.

“Yes. He helped you get those things over from Ricolletti’s, didn’t he?”

“Ye—es,” admitted Nan. She feared that the admission might get Walter into trouble.

“It seems to me like a boy’s trick,” Mrs. Cupp said reflectively. “I should have stopped to see who it was at the time. But I was afraid. My sister and I are in trouble enough as it stands, and I was nervous, I suppose,” she added, more to herself than to Nan.

“I’m very sure, Mrs. Cupp, that Walter would not frighten anybody.”

“Not if he thought he could save you girls from getting caught?” asked the matron, shrewdly.

“I am quite sure Walter was nowhere near the boathouse at that time,” Nan said, with confidence. “I know he telephoned to his sister this evening from their house. Couldn’t you call up his mother or father, and find out if he went out again after that time?”

“Good idea! I’ll do it,” said Mrs. Cupp. “You report to Dr. Prescott to-morrow, after chapel.”

This order did not make Nan sleep any more soundly that night. It was quite twelve o’clock when the girls separated under the sharp eye of Mrs. Cupp, and scattered to their rooms. Bess kissed Nan fondly before she crept into her own bed.

“I don’t care, Nancy!” she breathed, “we would have had a lovely time if it hadn’t been for old Cupp!”

“And the one who set her after us,” suggested Nan.

“Oh! who could she be? Linda?”

“We’ll never know, I s’pose,” said Nan. “I thought at first Linda and her crowd had robbed us.”

“Oh!”

“But I guess whoever did that, scared Mrs. Cupp, too.”

“The ghost?”

“Yes. If you wish to call him that. But he is a ghost with a big appetite.”

“Dear me! that’s so, isn’t it?” agreed Bess. “Well! I—don’t—know—ow-oo!” Yawn—sigh—murmur, and Bess was off to the Land of Nod.

Not so Nan. She tossed about for a long time ere she could find oblivion. Her conscience pricked her, and a prickly conscience is just as unhappy a bedfellow as a porcupine would be.

What would “Momsey” and “Papa Sherwood” say if they heard of this escapade? Nan realized that she had done wrong in yielding to the seductive suggestion of the secret supper. She might have given her girl friends a treat in some way that would not have broken the school rules.

She was sorry, very sorry indeed, that she had done this. More than a few tears wet Nan Sherwood’s pillow before she finally dropped asleep. Nor had she found relief from this feeling of depression the next morning, when she went alone to Dr. Prescott’s office.

This was the first time Nan had been sent to interview the principal of Lakeview Hall for any such reason. She had quite fallen in love with Dr. Beulah Prescott on the evening of her arrival at the school; and Nan Sherwood was of too truly an affectionate disposition to hurt or offend anybody whom she loved.

“Dear, dear, Nancy Sherwood,” said the principal, in a worried way. “I never expected to receive such a report about you, of all my new girls. Leader of a party of girls that steals out of the Hall after bedtime, feasts on contraband eatables—Ahem! where’s the list of this ‘forbidden fruit’? Here it is! Sandwiches, salad, cake, chocolate and coffee, ice-cream. Dear me! dear me! what will your digestions be like if you keep on in this way?”

“I don’t know, Dr. Prescott,” Nan said faintly, as the preceptress halted for breath.

“I see no pickles, olives or cheese on the bill-of-fare,” said the doctor, lowering her lorgnette. “How is that? A schoolgirl picnic without those delectables?”

“My—my money didn’t hold out,” confessed Nan, her eyes suddenly dancing. Dr. Prescott was not proving so difficult, after all.

“Mrs. Cupp reports only you for punishment,” said the principal, after a momentary smile. “Don’t you think the others deserve punishment, too?”

“No, Dr. Prescott,” Nan was prompt to say. “It wouldn’t have happened, and the other girls would not have been down there at the boathouse, if it hadn’t been for me.”

“Well, possibly that may be so. That was Mrs. Cupp’s opinion, and we will let it rest at that. Also, Mrs. Cupp recommended you to mercy, Nancy.”

This surprised Nan a good deal. She had not thought the stern matron was given at all to mercy.

“Nevertheless, we must show our disapproval of such reprehensible actions,” continued Dr. Prescott. “You are sentenced to solitary recreation hours for a week. On your honor, remember. No conversation with the other girls, save in study and recitation hours, until a week from to-day. Remember! Not even with Miss Harley. That is all, Nancy.”

It really seemed awfully funny.

Nan went about with sealed lips save when she had to ask a question of a neighbor in study hour or in class. Even in Room Seven, Corridor Four, there was silence. Bess was at first amused, then disgusted, then indignant.

“Why! whoever heard the like?” she cried. “Not to speak? Goodness! Why, I never had so many things to say to you in my life before, and you sit as dumb as one of those Japanese monkeys,” and she pointed to the tiny “Hear No Evil, See No Evil, Speak No Evil” group on Nan’s bookshelf.

At first Nan only smiled at her chum’s impatience. But soon she found it necessary to steal off by herself during recreation time. The temptation to speak was too great.

Nor did Bess try to make it easier for Nan to keep strictly to the line of punishment that had been inflicted upon her by Dr. Beulah Prescott. Bess began to take a wicked delight in catching her off her guard and getting a word past Nan’s lips before she thought.

“Oh bah!” cried the careless Bess. “What does it matter? We’re in our own room. Dr. Beulah knows very well you won’t stick to the very letter of her command.”

Nan felt differently about it. The principal had trusted her to keep her lips sealed during recreation hours; and she tried as much as possible to keep by herself. “Solitary recreation hours for a week.” That was Dr. Prescott’s command and Nan did her best to keep away from her fellow-pupils. One afternoon, between her last recitation for the day and suppertime, she went down to Mrs. Cupp with her arms full of summer clothing, for permission to put the frocks away in her trunk.

“Here’s your key and the key to the trunk-room. I trust the latter to you, Nancy, because I see you are a girl of honor,” Mrs. Cupp said, rather kindly for her. “I see you are trying to obey the doctor’s instructions regarding your recreation time. You may stay down there till the supper bell rings, if you like. But remember, if you wish to bring anything up with you from your trunk, you must show it to me.”

“Yes Mrs. Cupp,” replied Nan, soberly.

This was not the first time she had asked permission to go to her trunk. And she had always chosen a time when no other girls were around, and she could be alone in the trunk-room. She went down stairs rather thoughtfully now. Mrs. Cupp believed she was a girl of honor. Nan was wondering if, after all, she came up to the requirements for such a person?

“I am not being entirely truthful right now,” she thought. “I don’t need to go down cellar with these things. I have plenty of room for them in my clothes closet. I am going to my trunk for an entirely different reason.

“I wonder,” pursued Nan Sherwood, reflectively, “if all girls are like that? Are we naturally untruthful about little things? Do I know a perfectly frank girl in all this school? Goodness! nobody but poor Amelia Boggs, and she is half-cracked, the other girls say.

“That’s why I like Walter,” declared Nan, to herself. “I guess that is why I like Cousin Tom—and even Rafe. It’s sometimes ugly to speak the brutal truth, I know. But it is never dishonorable. Now am I deliberately acting deceitfully because I did not tell Mrs. Cupp all my reason for coming down here?”

Such abstract questions as this often troubled Nan Sherwood. She never discussed them with her chum, or with anybody else, now. But she often wished she could talk them over with her mother, as she used to do. “Momsey” always saw everything so clearly, and always knew just the right and wrong of things.

“And it’s so hard sometimes,” Nan murmured, “to tell what is right and what is wrong!”

She snapped on the electric light nearest to her trunk. The receptacles were in rows, each with a card on which the owner’s name was clearly written. Nan’s was in a corner at the end of the main building nearest the unfinished part. She had come down a passage from the stairway to get to the trunk-room. This part of the cellar was a long way from the kitchen and scullery.

Some of the girls were afraid to come to the trunk-room alone, although their imagination had not yet peopled this part of the Hall with ghosts. Nan thought of nothing, when she had raised the lid of her trunk, but one thing. She carefully put aside the empty trays and the layers of clothing hiding the long box at the bottom of the trunk.

It was locked with a little brass padlock. Tom Sherwood had made the box very neatly and nobody could possibly open the receptacle without the key, unless the box were broken. Nan wore the tiny key in a little leather bag, on a chain of fine gold links which had been her mother’s when she was a little girl in Memphis.

Nan quickly unlocked the box and raised the cover. A rush of sweet smelling herb-odors burst forth. It was the combined odor of the tamarack swamp of upper Michigan (or so it seemed), where Nan had spent the past summer. She lifted aside the covering of tissue paper, and revealed a great, pink-cheeked, blue-eyed, beautiful doll!

It was as large as a real baby, and it was dressed elegantly. Nan’s mother, with her own frail hands, had made all the garments “Beautiful Beulah” wore.

“Beulah, dear!” murmured Nan, hugging the doll up tight to her bosom and rocking herself to and fro as she sat upon the floor. “It’s just like going home again, to see you. Wouldn’t you like to see our dear little room in the ‘dwelling in amity’? If only we could fly back there, really! Only for just an hour! And have Momsey and Papa Sherwood at home, too, and all be together again!”

Nan choked up at this and the tears began to flow. But she crowded them back in a moment. “Oh! this will never do—this will never do,” she cried, under her breath. “I’ll only make you feel bad, too, my dear, darling Beautiful Beulah. And, goodness me!” added Nan Sherwood, suddenly becoming practical, “what would Dr. Beulah think if she heard me? She would perhaps think I had named you after her. I’m not sure that a principal of a great school like this would want to be godmother to a doll.

“I don’t care! I guess that’s why I love her so much—because she bears the same name as you, my dear. And you’d love her, too, if you could know her. Oh, dear! I wonder if I did wrong in hiding you down here in the bottom of my trunk? Mrs. Cupp certainly wouldn’t have taken you away from me. The girls might have made fun, and Bess, I s’pose, would have been difficult. But I’d have felt better to have you up stairs in Number Seven, Corridor Four——”

A step in the passage outside the open trunk-room door! Nan rose up in a panic, clutching Beulah to her breast. Somebody was coming.

There was not time to put the doll back into her nest and successfully hide her. The wall at the end of the cellar was of heavy planking. A pile of empty dry-goods cases stood at hand, a narrow alley having been left between the tiers of boxes and the plank wall.

Nan darted behind this screen of boxes, the doll in her arms. She slipped on something in the dark passage and was flung with considerable force against the plank partition. To her amazement and alarm, a narrow section of the partition moved out, dropping downward and outward from the top, as though it were hinged at the bottom.

This narrow door was weighted, so it could not fall abruptly. Nan was flung sprawling upon it, and lay there with her doll, as the shutter dropped quietly to a horizontal position.

She knew she lay over some deep cistern, or the like, and that the plank door bridged it. It was pitch-dark behind the partition and a sour, damp smell, like the odor of an old brewing cellar, rose to her nostrils. Nan Sherwood, startled as she was, uttered no outcry.

As Nan lay on the secret drawbridge, she heard a stealthy footstep on the cement floor of the trunk-room. The step was light, and, plainly, there was but one person approaching. It must be one of the girls. Certainly it could not be Mrs. Cupp, for she was heavy-footed. Nan wished she had not been so foolish as to run, for she was really frightened because of her position over the old cistern. If the intruder was only one of the other girls, coming to open a trunk, she could easily have hidden the doll behind the boxes and waited until the girl had gone up stairs again before putting Beautiful Beulah properly away in her nest.

In a few minutes Nan sat up and began to creep off the dropped door. As her weight was gradually removed from it, the weights began to raise the door into its usual position. There must have been some secret fastening to hold the door shut, that was broken when Nan’s weight was cast against the plank wall.

Her fall had been just at the right place to start the door swinging downward. Now, when she carefully stepped away from the partition, having risen to her full height, the secret door swung up and closed tightly. She could not feel its edge on either side with her fingers.

But that was not what she was most interested in just then. The secret door puzzled her, but the step in the cellar impressed Nan as being of more importance. She peered around the tiers of boxes to see the other girl.

It was Linda Riggs.

The trunks belonging to those girls whose names began with “R” were right next to those whose owners’ names commenced with “S.” The electric bulb near Nan’s trunk gave Linda light enough for her purpose. Nan saw her take a key from her purse and open her trunk with it.

That would not have been surprising, only for the fact that the key had no tag attached to it, such as Mrs. Cupp fastened to all the trunk keys left in her charge. Nan saw that Linda watched the door of the trunk-room sharply as she rummaged to the bottom of her trunk. The girl was evidently down here without Mrs. Cupp’s knowledge, and was afraid of being caught.

“That’s another key!” Nan whispered to herself. “Why! she owns two and Mrs. Cupp doesn’t know it.”

She watched Linda without saying a word. Linda, on the other hand, paid no attention to Nan’s open trunk. Seeing no other girl about, probably led her to believe that whoever had been in the trunk-room ahead of her had carelessly gone out, leaving her trunk open, and the door open and the lamp lit, as well.

Linda soon obtained the article she desired—a small, flat parcel—and with this, after relocking her trunk, she went away. Nan was curious enough to watch to see how Linda went up stairs. Surely she had not come down past Mrs. Cupp’s open door.

That suspicion was verified when Nan saw Linda turn into the passage leading to the kitchen. It was an hour in the afternoon when one might pass up the kitchen stairs without being observed by the busy women preparing supper. Besides, as Linda was always giving presents to the servants, they might be conveniently blind to her movements. Nan went back with Beulah and put her carefully away in the box at the bottom of the trunk. The mystery of the secret door was overshadowed in her mind by the actions of Linda Riggs.

“I guess we’re all deceivers,” Nan considered. “I’m deceitful myself. And Linda Riggs is positively dishonorable. Mrs. Cupp would be very angry if she knew Linda was down here without permission and had a private key to her trunk.

“And all we girls seem to be just delighted to break the rules, or try to fool the teachers. It really is dreadful! I guess we all must think that rules are made only to be broken.

“Oh, dear! perhaps if there were no laws none of us would care to go wrong,” concluded Nan, perhaps striking the key-note of all human frailty.

She went rather soberly up stairs and delivered her own trunk-key and the door-key to the matron, who she was glad asked her no questions. The afternoon mail had just arrived. May Winslow was acting as postmistress for the week, and the girls were crowding about the office table on which May had sorted the letters.

Either Dr. Prescott or Mrs. Cupp had run through the mail first. Letters from home were never held up. Suspicious looking letters had to be opened in the matron’s presence. Nan’s only missive this day was an unexpected one from Scotland.

She had grown to know just how the foreign mails were carried and when to look for a letter bearing the Emberon postmark. Somehow, this unexpected epistle frightened Nan.

She hurried up to Room Seven, Corridor Four, to read the letter alone. Her chum was not there and for once Nan was glad of that. Sitting by the window where the light was fading, Nan opened her letter.

“My dearest child:—

“Since writing you day-before-yesterday, we have received quite a shock. Your dear father is in such a state of mind that he cannot write to you about it. I am calm myself, dearest Nan, because I know that our Heavenly Father will not see us troubled more greatly than we can bear.

“I have, all the time, had perfect confidence in the final adjustment of Mr. Hughie Blake’s estate and the establishment of our clear title to it. It seemed as though this already was a fact. But a new difficulty has arisen. Just as Mr. Andrew Blake was about to take possession of the property in our name, a court order restrained him. A new branch of the family, at least, a newly discovered claimant by the name of Blake, has appeared. There are two sisters, maiden ladies, who claim that their mother was married to a man named Hugh Blake, who afterward separated from her. They have only recently found their mother’s marriage lines and their own birth certificates, proving the marriage and their own title to any property of which their father may have died possessed.

“Mr. Andrew Blake pooh-poohs this claim as he did the others. He is positive that Mr. Hughie Blake was never married. He was, in fact, notoriously a woman-hater. But while the Laird of Emberon was on his Continental travels many years ago, his steward, Hughie Blake, was for two years away from Castle Emberon. These two years correspond with the years in which these Blake sisters claim their father lived with their mother in a North of England shire.

“This is the story, dear Nan, the details of which will not interest you much, only as they affect our financial situation. We are greatly in Mr. Andrew Blake’s debt at the present time. Your father is writing by this mail to the lawyer in Tillbury to raise money on our little home by a mortgage to pay these debts and to pay your school bills for the remainder of the year.

“This holding up of our fortune is only temporary, I am sure. I am trusting in our Father’s goodness still. I will not be alarmed. But the delay worries your poor papa very much. Our friends here are very kind to us, and Mr. Andrew Blake urges us to accept his financial aid again; but Papa Sherwood can be, you know, the most stubborn of men when he wants to be.”

There was more of the letter—intimate, tender passages that Nan could have shown to nobody. Her mother’s heart was opened wide to the girl, as it always was when they were together. “Momsey” and she had been much more intimate than mothers and little daughters usually are. Mrs. Sherwood now confided in Nan as she would have done had they been at home together.

The hour darkened, and Nan could no longer see to read as she sat by the window. She put the letter away and bathed her eyes and face before turning on the light.

In fact, she was still in the dark when Bess came romping in. Nan seemed no more quiet to Bess than she had for several days.

“I declare!” cried Bess. “I’d just as soon room with a funeral mute, as with a girl who won’t talk. You’re the limit, Nan Sherwood!” and she went off to join some of the girls who were under no ban of silence.

Bess Harley was not at all a heartless girl; and she really loved Nan devotedly. But she could not understand just why her chum was so particular in her honorable observance of the sentence of silence. Nor did she know anything about the very upsetting letter Nan had received from Scotland. Finding Nan far from gay on this particular evening, and being fond of bustle and excitement herself, Bess deserted Number Seven, Corridor Four, and found amusement in the companionship of other girls who could talk.

Nan was unhappy; yet she was glad to be left to herself. She faithfully prepared her tasks for the next day, and then put out the light and sat by the window, looking out into the starlit night.

From her window she had an unobstructed view of the top of the flight of steps leading to the shore, as well as the blinking light on the point and the many windows of a lake steamer going past.

Of late the water had grown too cold for swimming, and boating was not so popular as it had been. The keen winds sometimes blew over the lake and into the school cove, foretelling the winter which was steadily approaching from the Canadian side.

Besides, as the term progressed, the school tasks for the girls became more arduous. Dr. Prescott began the year cautiously; but when she once had her girls “into their stride,” as she called it, she pushed them hard. There was less and less time for sport and recreation for those girls who desired to stand well in the monthly reports sent home to parents or guardians.

Girls like Linda Riggs and most of her friends, did not seem to care what their reports were. But Nan felt differently; and even careless Bess had ambition to please the folks at home.

As Nan sat at the window on this evening, however, she wondered if it greatly mattered, after all, what she did—whether she studied, or not. For the letter from Scotland had made the girl very hopeless, indeed. She could not, for this once, at least, feel the uplift of “Momsey’s” hopeful nature. She feared that the fortune which, like a will-o’-the-wisp, had danced before their eyes for so many months, was now about to disappear in a Morass of Despair. The little “dwelling in amity” mortgaged! That seemed to Nan a most terrible thing.

And “Papa Sherwood” and “Momsey” would have to come home, and “Papa Sherwood” would have to take up the search for work again which had so clouded their lives during the first weeks of this very year.

With the outlook on life of a much older person, Nan saw all these approaching difficulties, and they loomed up mountain high in her imagination. After the joy of believing poverty was banished forever from their lives, it seemed to be marching upon them with a more horrid mien than ever.

All the money that could possibly be raised upon the cottage on Amity Street would barely bring her parents home and pay the remainder of her year’s tuition at Lakeview Hall. Nan knew how much the latter would be, and there rose in her heart a determination. It would be impossible to get any of the half year’s tuition money back—that which had been already paid; but her father would not have to pay the remainder of the fee if she left school at the mid-winter holidays.

And this would she do. “Papa Sherwood” should not be troubled by that expense! If she only had not recklessly expended that whole five-pound note for the spread in the haunted boathouse!

Over spilled milk, however, there was little use to cry. Extravagances must stop right here and now.

By and by Nan slipped out of her clothes, braided her hair in the dark, and got into bed long before the retiring bell rang. When Bess came in, her chum made a pretense of being asleep, and in her heart thought: “More deceit!”

But Nan felt she could not listen to Bess’ chatter on this night.

She arose early in the morning, after an uneasy night, and while the steam was knocking its usual morning tattoo in the radiators (the girls said Mrs. Cupp never reported that annoyance to the engineer, for it served to make even the “lazybones” of the school rise promptly) Nan sat by the window, through which the cold light stole, and began a reply to her mother’s letter. She had written a page and a half when the gong sounded and Bess sleepily crept out of bed.

“Hul-lo!” Bess yawned.

Nan could merely nod to her.

“Oh, gracious goodness me!” cried Bess. “This is the last day you’ve got to keep your mouth closed, I should hope! I never did see such a stubborn girl in my life before! If I had been as dumb as you have been this week, I know I should never be able to speak again.”

Nan smiled at this; though to tell the truth, even that was hard work. To leave beautiful Lakeview Hall, and all the girls whom she loved, and the teachers, including Dr. Beulah and Professor Krenner!

Tears blinded her eyes. She could no longer see to write. She did not want to stain the pages with tears, for then “Momsey” would know just how bad she really felt. She jumped up, bathed her eyes with cold water, and finished her own toilet.

“You look just as though you had hay-fever, Nan,” Bess grumbled. “But as you can’t have that at this time of year, I believe you have been crying.”

Her chum did not admit this by either word or look. She put on her cap and coat and ran out for some exercise before breakfast. Bess never indulged in such a thing. She always dressed so slowly that she did not have time for a walk or a run before the breakfast bell sounded.

She did, on this morning, however, think to open the window before she left Room Seven, and left the corridor door open, too. Immediately a draft of air sucked through the room and blew Nan’s uncompleted letter to her mother out of doors. The result of this mischance was more important than one would have thought.

In the first place, Cora Courtney chanced to be walking briskly in the snowy garden. The thin white coverlet that had shrouded the walks and lawn overnight, crisped under her footsteps as she tramped along. Down fluttered Nan’s unfinished letter right in Cora’s path. Of course, Cora picked it up and it was only natural that she should look at it to see what it was.

“Goodness! Can this be so?” murmured Cora, after a glance down the written lines on the first page. “Oh! Dear me!”

She was not a hard-hearted girl at all. And Nan Sherwood had never done any wrong to Cora, or said anything to her that was not kindly. Cora had no reason whatsoever for wishing the girl from Tillbury ill. So, naturally, she was sorry to learn that such serious trouble had come upon her schoolmate.

Under other influences than those that had shaped her course ever since she had come to Lakeview Hall, Cora would have been a very different girl. Her people were really very poor. Her father was addicted to drink and his family suffered thereby. Her mother had come of a well-to-do family; but her relatives had almost all turned against her when she married Mr. Courtney.

One aunt, however, remembered the oldest of the Courtney children, and offered to educate Cora. Instead of sending the girl to a school where she would have been quickly and efficiently trained to earn her own living, the foolish aunt sent her to this exclusive finishing school for young ladies.

Every one about her had more money than poor Cora Courtney. Her clothing was barely sufficient. Dr. Prescott, out of her own pocket, delicately supplied the poor girl with some absolute necessities.

Thus feeling the nip of poverty all the time, Cora was easily tempted to join the clique of parasites who gathered around the free-handed, but unpleasant, Linda Riggs. They all toadied to Linda, ran errands for her, and as Laura Polk tartly said, “performed all the duties of the Roman populace as Linda, as a female Cæsar, demanded.”

Now Cora was immediately moved to pity by what she had discovered in Nan Sherwood’s unfinished letter. She could appreciate the sting of poverty, and knew how she should feel herself if her great aunt abruptly cut off the tuition fees. And in this case Nan seemed to be giving up all from a sense of duty.

Her heart told Cora to run to Nan with the letter and tell her how sorry she was; but her head advised her to take an entirely different course. And Cora had learned to let her head guide her, and not her heart.

There was still time before breakfast, and Cora hurried up to the room which she shared with Linda. It was in an entirely different part of the building from that where Nan and Bess lodged, and was a larger and much better-furnished apartment, with a private bath attached, put in at Mr. Riggs’ cost for his daughter. Cora Courtney was considered very lucky by their special clique to be Linda’s roommate, and she did not mind playing maid to the haughty Linda for the privilege of sharing in the luxuries of the apartment.

“Oh, Linda! Look what I’ve found!”

“I don’t care what it is!” snarled the purse-proud girl, as she stood before the mirror. “I can’t make my hair come right. It’s all in a tangle.”

She was sleepy and cross, and her scanty brown hair was in a snarl. “You’ll have to help me, Cora,” she added.

“You ought to get up when the gong strikes; then you wouldn’t have to be helped,” said Cora, who wanted to shirk an unpleasant service if she could.

“If I got up at five o’clock it wouldn’t be any better,” whined Linda. “It’s always in a snarl!”

“Then why don’t you braid it nicely when you go to bed? You fall right into bed with your hair in a regular rat’s nest!”

“I’m so-o tired then,” yawned Linda. “Come! be a friend and help me. I should think you would.”

“Goodness! I don’t like to fix hair any better than you do,” snapped Cora, coming unwillingly to the task.

“Go on and be a good child,” said Linda, more cajoling than usual. “I’m going to give you that coral necklace of mine to wear to the Grand Guard Ball tomorrow night.”

“Oh, Linda! are you truly?” gasped Cora, seizing the hairbrush with avidity at this promise.

“Yes. I know you like it.”

“But you won’t have any necklace to wear yourself!”

“Oh, yes, I will. Don’t fear,” said Linda, looking very shrewd and nodding emphatically.

Cora stood aside and looked at her closely.

“You don’t mean——?” she gasped.

“Never mind what I mean, Miss,” replied Linda, shortly. “You go on with your work.”

“You never mean to wear that beautiful necklace of your grandmother’s?” Cora amazedly inquired.

“Don’t I just?” returned Linda, tossing her head. “Ouch!”

“Don’t pull, then,” said Cora calmly.

“Oh! you’re awfully mean!” cried Linda, tears in her eyes.

“You’re just fooling. You couldn’t get the necklace without Mrs. Cupp’s knowing it, and you know very well she declared last term that no girl should wear such an expensive thing at Lakeview Hall.”

“Don’t you bother, Miss. Mrs. Cupp isn’t omnipotent,” said Linda, more placidly. “And the Grand Guard Ball is not held at the Hall, thank goodness! You shall wear the coral necklace. It looks pretty next to the black lace in the neck of your gown. And it shall be yours to keep if you’re a good girl. Now! what’s all this you tried to tell me when you came in? I’m awake now,” said Linda, luxuriating under Cora’s deft hands.

Cora thrust the unfinished letter which she had found before Linda’s eyes.

“Nan Sherwood’s writing!” gasped Linda, pouncing on it at once. She read aloud:

“Dearest Momsey:—

“I love you! love you! And I wish I were where you are, or you were where I am. I’d love to let down your beautiful hair and brush it and make it all pretty again, as I used. I am so, so lonely for you and Papa Sherwood that I don’t so much mind if you don’t ever get any of that money and have to come home, and we are poor again in ‘the little dwelling in amity.’ I so very much want to see you both that I hope you will come back from Scotland right away and we shall meet in dear old Tillbury and not have to be separated any more.

“I am thankful to you and Papa Sherwood for sending me to this nice school; and I enjoy it, and if everything were all right, I’d dearly love to stay. But I am so hungry for a sight of you that I’ll gladly give up school.

“And that is just what I must do, dear Momsey, and you must make Papa Sherwood agree. I won’t let him spend any of that money he will have to raise on mortgage to pay the other half year’s fees here. No, indeed!”

The letter ended there. Had Cora not been so much under Linda’s influence she would have cried a bit over the tender lines Nan had written.

But Linda fairly exulted over the information which the letter gave.

“Isn’t that great,” she demanded excitedly. “Now we’ll fix that Nan Sherwood! Got to leave, and her folks aren’t going to be rich, after all! I don’t suppose there was ever any chance of it, anyway. It was just talk. Ha! the nasty little thing. This will just fix her!”

And Nan, all that last day of silence, went about wondering why many of the girls looked so oddly at her, and especially Linda Riggs’ group. They laughed, and made supposedly funny speeches which were evidently aimed at Nan, but which she did not understand.

Rumor was blowing about, and before Bess Harley had any of the particulars from her chum of the calamity that had befallen, the whole school practically knew that Nan Sherwood’s folks “were poor as church mice.”