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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Nancy of Paradise Cottage, by Shirley Watkins
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Nancy of Paradise Cottage
+
+Author: Shirley Watkins
+
+Release Date: August 27, 2010 [EBook #33554]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NANCY OF PARADISE COTTAGE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Al Haines
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Nancy
+
+_of_
+
+Paradise Cottage
+
+
+_by_
+
+SHIRLEY WATKINS
+
+
+
+
+THE GOLDSMITH PUBLISHING COMPANY
+
+CHICAGO
+
+
+
+
+COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY
+
+GEORGE W. JACOBS & COMPANY
+
+
+_All rights reserved_
+
+Printed in U. S. A.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAPTER
+
+    I  THE HEROINE GOES TO MARKET
+   II  INSIDE THE COTTAGE
+  III  A MODERN CINDERELLA
+   IV  LADIES OF FASHION
+    V  A RETICENT GENTLEMAN--AND MISS BANCROFT
+   VI  MISS BANCROFT BEARDS THE OGRE
+  VII  A MAN OF "PRINCIPLES"
+ VIII  THE FIRST NIGHT AT SCHOOL
+   IX  A QUARREL
+    X  THE OGRE REAPPEARS
+   XI  ALMA MAKES COMPLICATIONS
+  XII  ALMA IN A SCRAPE
+ XIII  NANCY HAS A GREAT ADVENTURE
+  XIV  PARADISE COTTAGE
+   XV  THE INCOMPREHENSIBLE MR. PRESCOTT
+
+
+
+
+Nancy of Paradise Cottage
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE HEROINE GOES TO MARKET
+
+"Let's see--bacon, eggs, bread, sugar, two cans of corn, and jam.  Have
+I gotten everything, Alma?"  Nancy, checking off the items in her
+marketing list, looked over toward her sister, who had wandered to the
+door and stood gazing out into the street where a gentle September rain
+was falling.  Alma did not answer, seeming to have gone into a dream,
+and the grocer waited patiently, his pencil poised over his pad.
+
+"Alma, do wake up!  Have I forgotten anything?  I'm sure there was
+something else," said Nancy, frowning, and studying her list, with her
+under lip thrust forward.  "I regularly go and forget something every
+Saturday night, when there's no Hannah to concoct something out of
+nothing for Sunday luncheon."
+
+"You said you were going to bake a cake--a chocolate layer cake,"
+suggested Alma, turning, and viewing the proceeding disinterestedly
+with her hands in her pockets.
+
+"That's it.  I have to get flour, and some cooking chocolate, and
+vanilla.  Alma, you've got to help me carry these things.  I'm not
+Goliath."
+
+"Mercy, Nancy, we don't have to take all that home with us, do we?
+Can't you send them, Mr. Simpson?"
+
+The grocer shrugged apologetically.
+
+"It's Saturday, Miss Prescott, and the last delivery went out at
+three--all my boys have gone home now or I'd try to accommodate you."
+
+"I do hate to go about looking like an old market woman, with my arms
+full of brown paper parcels," murmured Alma, _sotto voce_ to her sister.
+
+"Goodness, I don't imagine there'll be a grand stand along the way,
+with thousands watching us through opera glasses," laughed Nancy.
+"Would you mind telling me whom you expect to meet who'd faint with
+genteel horror because we take home our Sunday dinner?  I don't intend
+to starve to spare anybody's feelings."
+
+"Last week I was dragging along a bag of potatoes--and--and I met Frank
+Barrows.  And the bag split while I was talking to him, and those
+hateful potatoes went bumping around all over the pavement.  I never
+was so mortified in my life," said Alma, sulkily.
+
+Nancy shot a keen glance at her sister's pretty face, and her eyes
+twinkled.  Alma's shortage of the American commodity called humor was a
+source of continual quiet joy to Nancy, who was the only member of the
+Prescott family with the full-sized endowment of that gift.
+
+"Dear me, whatever did Frank do?  Scream and cover his eyes from the
+awful sight?  Had he never seen a raw potato in all his sheltered young
+life?"
+
+Alma shrugged her shoulders--a slight gesture with which she and her
+mother were wont to express their hopeless realization of Nancy's lack
+of finer feelings.
+
+"I don't suppose you would have minded it.  But _I_ hate to look
+ridiculous, particularly before anyone like Frank Barrows."
+
+"But, Alma, you funny girl, don't you see that you look a thousand
+times more ridiculous when you act as if a few potatoes bouncing about
+were something serious?  Don't tell me you stood there gazing off
+haughtily into the blue distance while Frank gathered up your silly old
+potatoes?  Or did you disown them?  Or did you play St. Elizabeth, and
+expect a miracle to turn them into roses so that they would be less
+offensive to Frank's aristocratic eyes?  Come on now, help me shoulder
+our provisions.  We're members of the Swiss Family Robinson, going back
+to our hut with our spoils.  Pretend we're savages, and this is a
+desert island, and not respectable Melbrook at all.  Next time we go
+marketing you can disguise yourself with a beard and blue goggles."
+
+Alma laughed unwillingly.  She was a dainty and singularly pretty
+girl--a little bit foolish, and a good bit of a snob, but Nancy adored
+her, though she enjoyed making good-natured digs at Alma's weak spots.
+
+They took up their bundles, said good-night to Mr. Simpson, and went
+out.
+
+It was a walk of three miles from the village--or, as it preferred to
+be called--the town of Melbrook to the Prescotts' house, which lay in
+the country beyond, a modest little nest enough, where the two girls
+had grown up almost isolated by their poverty from the gay life of the
+younger Melbrookians.  Alma chafed unhappily against this isolation,
+chafed against every reminder of their poverty, and, like her mother,
+once a beauty and a belle, craved the excitement of admiration, luxury
+and fine things.  She was ashamed of the little house, which was
+shabby, it is true, ashamed of having to wear old clothes, and made
+herself wretched by envying the richer girls of the neighborhood their
+beautiful houses, their horses and their endless round of gay times.
+As Nancy once told her mother, in affectionate reproof, they were
+always trying to "play rich"--Mrs. Prescott and Alma.  She had tried to
+teach Alma her own secret of finding life pleasant; but Alma did not
+love books, nor long solitary walks through the summer woods; and
+Nancy's ambition of fitting herself to meet the world and make her own
+living seemed to both Alma and her mother dreary and unfeminine.
+Somewhere, in the back of her pretty head, Mrs. Prescott cherished the
+hope and the belief that the two girls would find some way of coming
+into what she called "their own"--not by Nancy's independent plan of
+action, but through some easier, pleasanter course.  She shuddered at
+the idea of their making their own living, and opposed Nancy's wish to
+go to college on the ground that no men liked blue-stocking women, and
+that therefore Nancy would be an old maid.
+
+"But, Mother darling, we can't just sit back and wait for some young
+millionaire to come and carry us off?" Nancy would plead, shaking her
+head.  Time was flying, and Nancy was seventeen, and eager to begin her
+own life.  "Let me go--I can work my way through, and Alma can stay at
+home with you."
+
+"I need you to help me with Alma," was Mrs. Prescott's answer.  Nancy
+felt helpless.  Her father, before her, had to his sorrow recognized
+the hopelessness of driving any common-sense views into Mrs. Prescott's
+pretty, silly little head.  She had never realized that the decline of
+the family's fortune had been, in no small measure, due to her.  She
+accounted for it on the grounds of old Mr. Thomas Prescott's inhuman
+stubbornness and selfishness.
+
+The two girls, leaving the village behind them, were walking briskly
+through the rain, down the main road, bordered by the imposing country
+estates of people who had gradually settled on the pretty countryside.
+Nancy could remember when the hill, where now stood a staring white
+stone mansion, surrounded by close-clipped lawns and trim gardens, had
+been a wild, lovely swell of meadow, dotted with clusters of oaks and
+elms; when in place of the smug little bungalow, with its artificial
+pond and waterfall, and ornate stone fences, there had been a wooded
+copse, where squirrels scuttled about among branches of trees, since
+fallen in the path of a moneyed civilization.  Other of the houses, of
+haughty Mansard architecture, had stood there before she had been born,
+and it had often seemed to her that the huge, solemn, beautiful old
+place of Mr. Thomas Prescott had been there since the Creation.  As
+they passed it, they slackened their pace, and despite the weight of
+bundles which grew heavier every minute, stopped and peered through the
+bars of the great, wrought-iron gates.
+
+A broad drive, meticulously raked and weeded, wound away from them
+under magnificent arching trees, to the portals--Nancy said it would
+have been impossible to consider Uncle Thomas's door anything but a
+portal--which were just visible under the low-hanging branches.  The
+rest of the old stone house was screened from the rude gaze of prying
+eyes, like the face of a faded dowager of the harem; save for the upper
+half of a massive Norman tower, which thrust itself up out of the nest
+of green leaves, like the neck of some inquisitive, prehistoric bird.
+
+"I don't believe Uncle Thomas has passed through these gates in fifteen
+years," said Nancy.  "One could almost believe that he had really died
+and had had himself buried on the grounds, like the eccentric old
+recluse he is."
+
+"Well, they would have had to have done something with all his money,"
+replied Alma, pressing her forehead against the iron bars; "unless he
+left everything to his butler, and had the will read in secret.  It
+would be just like him.  Oh, Nancy, why are there such selfish old
+misers in the world?  Just think--if he'd just give us the least little
+bit of all his money.  Just enough to get a horse and carriage, and buy
+some nice clothes, and--and get a pretty house.  It wouldn't be
+anything to him.  Mamma says she is sure that he will relent some day."
+
+Nancy shrugged her shoulders.  To her mind, it was foolish of her
+mother to put any hopes on the whims of an old eccentric.  Mrs.
+Prescott was one of those poor optimists who believe earnestly in the
+miracles of chance, always forgetting that chance works its miracles as
+a rule only when the way has been prepared for them by the plodding
+labor of common sense.
+
+"We mustn't count on that, Alma," she said soberly.  "There is no use
+in living on the possibility that Uncle Thomas will relent, and make us
+rich.  It isn't just for the pure love of money that he has been so
+stingy toward us, I believe.  He was never a miser toward Father, you
+know.  I--I think he would have given us everything in the world
+if--if----"  She hesitated, unwilling to state her private opinion to
+Alma.
+
+"If what?"
+
+"Well, you see, I think the trouble was this.  Come along, we mustn't
+wait here, or you'll catch cold."
+
+"What do you think the trouble was?" prompted Alma, padding after her
+sister, and sloshing placidly through the puddles, in all the
+nonchalant confidence of sound rubbers.
+
+"Well, Alma, you mustn't misunderstand me.  I'm afraid you will.  You
+know how I adore Mother.  She's so pretty, and--and childlike, and
+funny that nobody on earth could ever blame her----"
+
+"Blame her?  For what?" cried Alma, with sudden fire.
+
+"Nothing.  Only, Alma, we must realize that sometimes Mother makes
+little mistakes, and I believe that she has had to pay more heavily for
+them than she deserves.  We've got to try to protect her against them,
+by looking at life squarely, and wisely, Alma----"
+
+"Are you going to preach a sermon?  What were you going to say about
+Uncle Thomas?"
+
+"Just this.  You know Uncle Thomas was a very clever man.  He made
+every bit of his money himself.  Father told me long ago that when
+Uncle Thomas began in life he did not have a cent in the world; he
+started out as a plain mill-hand, and then he became a mechanic, and he
+worked his way up from one rung to another, until through his own
+talent and pluck he became very, very rich.  Well, it's only natural
+that a man like that should give money its full value--when he's toiled
+for years at so many cents an hour, he knows just exactly how many
+cents there are in a dollar.  Perhaps he puts too great a value upon
+it, but certainly we aren't judges of that.  You know that Uncle Thomas
+never married, and when Grandfather died, Uncle Thomas became Daddy's
+guardian.  I believe he loved Father better than anyone in the world.
+Who could help it?"  Nancy's voice trembled slightly, and she winked
+back the tears which rose to her eyes at the memory of her father's
+handsome merry face, which had grown so unaccountably saddened and worn
+before his early death.
+
+"He gave Father everything he wanted, when he was a boy--you know how
+Daddy used to tell us how Uncle Thomas would tiptoe up to his room at
+night and slip gold pieces into his stocking, so that he could find
+them in the morning, and then when Daddy asked him about it, he would
+shrug his shoulders, and his eyes would twinkle, and he'd say, 'It must
+have been Brownies.'"
+
+"I can't imagine how a man who used to be like that could ever have
+grown so hard and bitter," said Alma.
+
+"Well--then, you see, when Father grew up, Uncle wanted him to be
+successful for himself.  And he was terribly proud of Father when Daddy
+first came back and told him that he had made five thousand dollars in
+his first year at business.  Then Father told him that he was going to
+be married.  Uncle didn't want him to--not until he had definitely
+settled himself in life.  And then, Father was very young, and Mother
+only a girl of seventeen--think of it, just my age.  But when Uncle saw
+Mother, he adored her, of course."  Nancy paused, and seemed to have
+forgotten the rest of her story, but Alma prompted her curiously.  She
+had never heard this tale before, for Nancy had gleaned it bit by bit
+from her father, when they used to take long walks together through the
+country, and, putting two and two together, she had been able to get
+rather close to the real truth of things.
+
+"I know Uncle adored Mother," said Alma, kicking through a pile of wet
+leaves.  "He gave her those lovely Italian earrings, which I'm to have
+when I'm eighteen.  And all that wonderful Venetian lace, which the
+first one of us to be married is going to have for her wedding gown."
+
+"Yes.  Well, then--then after Father and Mother were married things
+didn't go so very well.  Mother was just a girl--just my age, you know,
+only she was pretty, like you, and, I suppose, a little extravagant.
+At least, they weren't able to make ends meet very well, although Daddy
+made a good income--and, anyhow, Uncle Thomas would have thought her
+extravagant.  He didn't see why it was necessary for her to send for
+her clothes to Paris, and why Father was always worried about bills,
+when he should have been able to live well within his income.  Anyway,
+Father wasn't able to save a cent, and one day Uncle Thomas came to him
+and said that he had a very good opportunity for him to invest his
+savings, so that they would draw a much better income than what they
+were giving.  The only trouble was that Father didn't have any savings.
+Then Uncle became furious; he asked Father and Mother what kind of
+future they thought they were laying up for us, and he scolded Mother
+terribly for not helping Father.  He quoted the Bible about women being
+the helpmeet of their husbands, and about the parents eating sour
+grapes and setting the children's teeth on edge.  He said that they
+were taking the path to ruin, and that Father could expect no help from
+him unless he and Mother economized.  But you see, poor Mother always
+considered Paris dresses and jewellery and expensive dainties the
+necessities and not just the luxuries of life.  I don't suppose she
+really understood how to economize at all.  And anyway, things got
+worse instead of better.  Then, one year, Daddy lost an awful lot of
+money trying to make some quickly so that he could get his debts
+cleared up, and start fresh.  Instead, he only got in deeper.  And--and
+then he fell ill.  And you remember, Alma, when poor Father was dying,
+Uncle came.  And he cried and cried.  But when Mother came into the
+room, he got up and went out, and shut the door behind him.  Then he
+shut the gates of his house against us, too.  I think he feels that
+we--we girls must learn to look at life seriously, to work out our own
+futures--so that poverty will teach us to be wiser than--than poor,
+darling little Mother----"  Nancy's voice had sunk, as if she were
+talking to herself, so that Alma barely heard the last words.  She was
+thinking of Alma, wondering how she could teach her luxury-loving
+little sister to see life practically, without taking away the joy of
+it from her.
+
+"We mustn't rely on Uncle Thomas, Alma," she said presently.  "We
+mustn't count on anything but what we can do for ourselves.  Remember
+that, dear.  We've got to realize that our lives must run a different
+course from those of richer girls--we can never do the things they
+do--but surely they will be richer lives, and happier lives, if--if we
+rely on no one, ask nothing from anyone, but what we earn"--her head
+went up--"never struggle for, or want the things that lie beyond our
+means, but make always the opportunities that lie within our grasp, or
+_the ones that we can make for ourselves_, serve as stepping stones."
+
+Alma glanced at her sister's sober, handsome face.  There were times
+when Nancy looked to her like some brave, gallant, sturdy lad, and
+there were times when she agreed with Nancy in spite of herself, and
+against her own inclinations.
+
+"Here we are--home again.  And if it isn't the snuggest, cosiest, most
+cheerful burrow between here and Melbrook, why"--Nancy strode gaily up
+the little brick walk with her long, boyish strides, and breaking into
+a laugh, finished, "I'll beard the Prescott himself--tower, donjon-keep
+and all!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+INSIDE THE COTTAGE
+
+It was what Nancy called the pluperfect hour of the day; that is, of a
+rainy day.  The curtains of the living-room were drawn over the
+windows, the mellow lamplight dealing kindly with their faded folds.
+The rain, which had brought with it an early autumn chill, beat
+rhythmically against the panes, and gurgled contentedly from a water
+spout, as if it were revelling in the fact that it had had the whole
+countryside to itself for four-and-twenty hours.
+
+Alma had washed her yellow hair, and had built a fire to dry it by.
+Nancy, in her dressing-gown and slippers, with her own brown mane
+braided into a short, thick club, was icing the chocolate cake, helping
+herself generously to the scrapings in the earthenware bowl.  Mrs.
+Prescott was embroidering.  This was her greatest accomplishment,
+learned in a French convent.  Knitting bored her to death, and darning
+drove her crazy, but she could sit by the hour stitching infinitesimal
+petals on microscopic flowers, and turning out cake mats, tea-cloths
+and fancy collars by the score.  Faded only slightly by her forty-odd
+years, she was still an exquisitely pretty woman, with a Dresden-china
+face, marred ever so little by the fine lines which drooped from the
+corners of her delicate nose to the corners of her childish mouth.  Her
+golden hair was barely silvered, her skin as fresh and rosy as Alma's,
+and her round little wrists, and pink-tipped fingers, Alma might have
+envied.  The lacy dressing-gown she wore, which, at the slightest
+motion, shook out a faint little whiff of some expensive French
+perfume, struck an odd note in the shabby room, where the couch sadly
+displayed a broken spring, and not the most careful placing of
+furniture that Nancy could devise entirely concealed the holes in the
+faded carpet.
+
+"We ought to put a glass cover over Mother, the way some people cover
+French clocks," Nancy said laughingly.  "You're much too valuable to
+get any of the dust of every-day life on you, Mamma."
+
+"I'm getting old, my dear.  I only think of my daughters now," said
+Mrs. Prescott, with a little sigh and pushing a curly wisp of hair back
+from her face.  "I shall be putting on spectacles soon."
+
+"Catch you!  You'd go blind as a bat before you'd do any such violence
+to your beauty.  You're like Alma.  I had to argue for half an hour
+to-day to make Alma wear her raincoat.  It wasn't becoming, and she'd
+far rather die of pneumonia than look like a----"
+
+"A hippopotamus," said Alma.  "That's what I look like in the old
+thing.  The sleeves dangle over my hands like a fire hose."
+
+"Nancy, I've come to a definite conclusion in regard to you and Alma,
+for this winter," said Mrs. Prescott, laying down her embroidery and
+trying to look practical and decided.
+
+"How much will it cost?" Nancy's eyes twinkled.
+
+"It's not a question of money."
+
+"Nothing ever is--with Mamma and Alma," Nancy thought, but she was
+silent, and continued to lick the chocolate off her spoon composedly.
+
+"I have thought the whole thing over very carefully, and I am quite
+sure that the matter of money must not be weighed against the value
+which it would have for you girls."
+
+"It's not a trip to Europe, is it, Mamma?" asked Alma, quite as if she
+expected that this might be the case.  Indeed, a trip to Europe would
+have been no more incredible to Nancy than her mother's plan, which
+Mrs. Prescott proceeded to unfold.
+
+"You see, my dears, living as we do, you girls are absolutely cut off
+from the opportunities which are so essential to every girl's success
+in life.  This has been a great worry to me.  You are growing older,
+and you are forming no acquaintances that will be of value to you.  For
+this reason I have decided that the expense of sending you both--for a
+last year, you understand--to a good school, a smart school, a school
+where Alma can meet girls who will count for something in social
+life--is an expense that must be met."
+
+"But--heavens, we've had all the ordinary schooling we need," exclaimed
+Nancy in amazement.  "If--if I could just have a few months' tutoring
+so that I could take my college exams in the spring--I could work my
+way through college easily----"
+
+"I don't want you to go to college, Nancy," said Mrs. Prescott
+irritably.  "What in the world is the use of a whole lot of ologies and
+isms--and ruining your looks over a lot of senseless analyzing and
+dissecting and everything----"
+
+"I won't be studying anything useless, Mother dearest.  But don't you
+see that it will be ever so much easier for me to get a position as a
+teacher if I can show a Bachelor's degree instead of just a smattering
+of French, or a thimbleful of ancient history?"
+
+"There's no reason why you should think of becoming a teacher,"
+answered Mrs. Prescott.  "And I wish you wouldn't talk about it--it's
+so dreadfully drab and gloomy."
+
+"But I want to make my living in some way."
+
+"If you and Alma marry well, there won't be any reason why you should
+make your living."
+
+"But, Mother, we can't count on chance, like that.  Suppose Alma and I
+never met a rich man whom we could love--we'd be helpless."
+
+"A year at Miss Leland's will give both of you plenty of opportunities.
+You'll meet girls there whom you ought to know, girls who will invite
+you to their houses, through whom you'll meet eligible young men----"
+
+"The expense of paying for board and tuition at Miss Leland's would be
+the least of the digging we'd have to do into the family purse.  We'd
+be under obligations to people, which we would never be in a position
+to repay--we'd be no better than plain, ordinary sponges.  I--I
+couldn't bear it.  Besides, the fees at Miss Leland's are terribly
+high.  I could go to college for almost two years on what I'd pay for
+one year at Miss Leland's--and all that we'd get at that school would
+be a little French, a smattering of history, dancing and fudge parties."
+
+"And extremely desirable acquaintances."
+
+"But, Mother, we'd never be able to keep up with them on their own
+scale of living," pleaded Nancy, with a hopeless conviction in her
+heart that she was talking to the winds.  "Girls like Elise
+Porterbridge and Jane Whiteright have an allowance of a hundred a
+month, and anything else they want, when they've spent it."
+
+"You've got money on the brain, Nancy," said Alma, shaking her curls
+off her face.  "You are a regular old miser."
+
+"Well, you're right, perhaps.  I--I hate to, heaven knows, but we do
+have to think about it, Alma.  It's the poor gamblers who are always
+counting on a lucky chance that are ruined.  I want to be prepared for
+the worst--and then if something nice turns up, why, wouldn't that be
+ten times better than if, when we had been counting on the best, the
+worst should happen?"
+
+"You see, dears," Mrs. Prescott had entirely missed the point of
+Nancy's last remark, "Uncle Thomas is very old, and I am sure--I am
+_quite_ sure that he will relent."
+
+"Oh, Mother!"  Poor Nancy flung up both hands in despair.
+
+"I have entered you both at Miss Leland's, so, really, there is no use
+in arguing about it any more.  And I've already sent the check for the
+first term.  Everything is decided.  I didn't tell you until to-night,
+just because I was afraid that this hard-headed old Nancy of mine would
+try to argue me out of it; when I _know_ that it's the best and wisest
+thing to do.  Nancy, darling, please don't scowl like that.  You aren't
+angry with Mother, are you?"  A soft little hand was laid on Nancy's
+muscular brown one, and in spite of herself the girl relented, with a
+whimsical smile and a sigh.
+
+"I'd like to see anyone who could be angry with you for two minutes,"
+she said, burrowing her brown head in the lace on her mother's shoulder.
+
+"That nasty old Uncle Thomas has been angry with me for ten years, very
+nearly.  Isn't he a dreadful old man?" laughed Mrs. Prescott, tweaking
+Nancy's ear.
+
+"We'll have to get a lot of new clothes if we are going to boarding
+school."  Alma, having spread the towel on the floor, reclined full
+length in front of the fire, and meditated with satisfaction on the
+delightful prospect.
+
+"Mamma, if I could just once have a hat with a feather on it--a genuine
+_plume_, I'd be happy for the rest of my days."
+
+"Wouldn't Alma be lovely?" cried Mrs. Prescott delightedly.  "Oh, you
+don't know how I long to give my daughters everything--everything.  One
+thing you must have, Alma, is a black velvet dress--made very simply,
+of course.  They are so serviceable," she flung this sop to Nancy, who,
+with her head thrown back, was good-humoredly tracing phantom figures
+in the air with her forefinger.
+
+"In for a penny, in for a pound," she observed, agreeably.  "Oh,
+darling Uncle Thomas, kindly lend us a million.  We need it, oh, we
+need it--every hour we need it!"
+
+"Let's set one day aside for shopping," was Alma's bright suggestion;
+she felt that this would be her element.  "We'll go into the city in
+the morning, get everything done by noon, lunch at Mailliard's and then
+go to a matinee.  I haven't seen a play since Papa took us to see
+Humpty Dumpty, when Nance and I were little things."
+
+"I've got eighty-three cents," said Nancy.  "I'd like to see the color
+of _your_ money, ma'am, before we do any gallivanting."
+
+"Well,--I'm not going to sit here gazing at that cake another
+minute,--_please_ give me a slice, Nancy, sugar-pie, lambkin,--just a
+wee little scrooch of it," begged Alma, snuffing the handsome chocolate
+masterpiece of Nancy's culinary skill.  Nancy took off a crumb and gave
+it to her, which elicited a wail of indignation from Alma.
+
+"Well, here you are.  And it'll give you a nice tummy-ache, too,"
+predicted Nancy, cutting off a generous slice.  "Good heavens--there's
+the door-bell, Mother!" She stopped, knife in hand and listened,
+petrified.  "Who on earth can be coming here at this time of night, and
+all of us in our dressing-gowns.  Alma, you're the most nearly dressed
+of all of us.  Here, pin up your hair.  There it goes again.  Fly!"
+
+Alma seized a handful of hairpins, and thrusting them into her hair as
+she went, ran out of the room.
+
+Nancy and her mother listened with eyebrows raised.
+
+"Must be a letter or something," Nancy surmised.  "You don't
+suppose--it couldn't be----"
+
+Alma forestalled her conjectures, whatever they might have been, by
+entering the room with her face shining and an opened letter in her
+hand.
+
+"It's an _invitation_, Nancy," she beamed.  "Isn't that exciting?
+Elise Porterbridge wants us to come to a 'little dance she's giving
+next Friday night.'  And the chauffeur is waiting for an answer."
+
+"Funny she was in such a hurry," remarked Nancy.  "I suppose someone
+fell out, and she's trying to get her list made up.  What do you think,
+Mother?"
+
+"Why, it's delightful.  I want you to know Elise better anyway.  You
+know her aunt married the Prince Brognelotti, and she will probably do
+everything for that girl when she makes her debut."  Mrs. Prescott
+rustled over to the writing-table and despatched a note in her flowing,
+pointed hand.
+
+"Hush, Mamma, the chauffeur will hear you," cautioned Nancy with a
+slight frown.  It always pricked her when Alma or her mother said
+snobbish little things, and roused her democratic pride--the stiffest
+pride in the world.
+
+"A dance," carolled Alma, when the door had slammed again behind the
+emissary of the Porterbridge heiress.  "A real, sure enough dance!"
+She seized Nancy by the waist and whirled her about; then suddenly she
+stopped so abruptly that Nancy bumped hard against the table.  Alma's
+face was sober, as the great feminine wail rose to her lips:
+
+"I haven't a thing to wear!"
+
+"You must get something, then," said Mrs. Prescott, positively, as if
+it were the simplest thing in the world.  "I want you to look lovely,
+Alma.  It's dreadful to think of a girl with your beauty not being able
+to appear at your best all the time."  Mrs. Prescott had a habit of
+speaking to Alma as if she were a petted debutante of nineteen, instead
+of just a pretty, care-free youngster of sixteen.  She looked at Nancy,
+who was the treasurer of the family, much as an impecunious queen might
+look at her first Lord of the Exchequer while asking him for funds to
+buy a new crown.
+
+"Why can't you wear your blue crepe," was Nancy's unfeeling answer.
+"It's very becoming, and you've hardly worn it."
+
+"If you call that an evening dress," Alma cried, on the verge of tears,
+"you've a vivid imagination--that's all I've got to say.  I just won't
+go if I have to look dowdy and home-made.  I wouldn't have any kind of
+a time--you know that----"
+
+"You could cut out the neck and sleeves, and get a new girdle.  I'm
+going to do that to my yellow, and with a few flowers--there'll be some
+lovely cosmos in the garden--it'll look very nice.  And you're sure to
+have a good time, no matter what you wear, Alma."
+
+"Oh, she can't go if her clothes aren't just right, Nancy--that's all
+there is to it," said Mrs. Prescott.
+
+"Clothes," declared Alma, her voice quavering between tears and
+indignation, "are the most important things in the world.  It doesn't
+matter _how_ pretty a girl is--if her dress is dowdy, no one will
+notice her."
+
+"And you must remember, Nancy, that she will be compared with girls who
+will be sure to be wearing the freshest, smartest and daintiest
+things," added Mrs. Prescott.  Nancy began to laugh.  They argued with
+her as if she were some stingy old master of the house instead of a
+slip of a girl of seventeen.  But there was some truth in what Alma had
+said, and Nancy knew what agonies would torment her if she felt that
+she fell a whit below any girl at the dance in point of dress.  Nancy
+could sympathize with her there--only it was quite out of the question
+that _both_ she and Alma should have new dresses.  She thought hard a
+moment.  There was not very much left in the family budget to carry
+them through the remainder of the month--but then she might let the
+grocer's and butcher's bills run over, or, better still, she might
+charge at one of the city department stores where the Prescotts still
+kept an account.  It would be too bad if Alma's first dance should be
+spoiled, even if the couch did go in its shabby plush for another month
+or so.  Five yards of silk would come to about fifteen dollars--new
+slippers not less than seven, silk stockings, two--that made
+twenty-four dollars--thirty to give a margin for odds and ends like
+lining and trimming.  Alma would need a pretty evening dress when she
+went off to school, and she might as well have it now.
+
+"Well, listen, you poor old darling," she said slowly.  "To-day's
+Saturday.  If we trot in town on Monday and get the material, we could
+easily make up a pretty dress for you to wear on Friday night.  Let's
+see----"
+
+"She could have a pale blue taffeta," Mrs. Prescott suggested, who was
+in her element when the subject turned to the matter of clothes, "made
+perfectly plain--with a broad girdle--or you could have a girdle and
+shoulder-knots of silver ribbon--and wear silver slippers with it.  It
+would be dear with a round neck, and tiny little sleeves, and a short,
+bouffant skirt.  You could wear my old rose-colored evening wrap,--it's
+still in perfect condition."
+
+"That would be _scrumptious_!" shrieked Alma, flinging her arms about
+them both.  "You two are angelic _dumplings_, that's what you are."
+
+"Monday morning, then," said Nancy.  "We'd better take an early train."
+
+When her mother and sister had gone to bed, she took out her little
+account book and began to figure, then all at once she flung the pencil
+down in disgust at herself.
+
+"Alma's right.  I'm turning into a regular old miser.  I'm not going to
+bother--I'm not going to bother.  But--but somebody's _got_ to."  She
+frowned, staring at the small old-fashioned picture of her father,
+which smiled gaily at her from the top of the desk.  "You left that
+little job to me, didn't you?" she said aloud, and the memory of some
+words her father had once spoken to her laughingly came back to her
+mind--"You're my eldest son, Nancy--mind you take care of the women."
+
+"Only I'm jolly well sick of being a boy, Daddy," she said, as she
+jumped into bed.  "I'll let the first person who steps forward take the
+job."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+A MODERN CINDERELLA
+
+"Let's take a cab to the station.  The roads are awfully wet still, and
+I'll ruin my shoes," suggested Alma.  The little family were at
+breakfast, Nancy and Alma hastily swallowing their coffee so that they
+could hurry off to the station.  After the fit of autumn wind and rain,
+another summer day had come, with a glistening sunlight which was doing
+its best to cheer up the drooping flowers in the tiny garden.
+
+"We don't need a cab.  What are you talking about?" replied Nancy,
+glancing out of the window.  "It's a wonderful day, and we don't have
+to make for all the puddles on the way to the station like ducks.  By
+the way, don't let me forget to stop at the bank.  I dare say I ought
+to take some money with me in case we can't get just what we want at
+Frelinghuysen's.  How much do you think we should have, Mother?"
+
+"Seventy-five dollars ought to be enough," said Mrs. Prescott vaguely,
+after a moment's calculation.  Nancy whooped.
+
+"Seventy-five!  Good gracious--why, if I spend a cent over forty, we'll
+have to live on bread and water for the rest of the month!"
+
+"Well, just as you think, dear--you know best, of course," Mrs.
+Prescott answered absently.  "You two had better be starting.  I wish
+you would get Alma a new hat while you're in town, Nancy.  I don't
+quite like that one she has--it doesn't go with her suit."
+
+Nancy pushed her chair back from the table.
+
+"I'll trot out and see Hannah a moment.  We have about thirty-five
+minutes, Alma."
+
+It took them twenty minutes to walk to the station.  Alma was in high
+spirits, Nancy still thoughtful.  But the wind was up and out, tossing
+the trees, rippling the puddles, which reflected a clear, sparkling
+sky, and the riotous, care-free mood of the morning was infectious.
+
+As the train sped through the open country, passing stretches of
+yellowing fields, clusters of woodland and busy little villages, Alma
+chattered joyously:
+
+"Aren't you awfully glad about the party, Nancy?  Don't you think we
+can go to a matinee--it's such a deliciously idle, luxurious sort of
+thing to do!  I'm going to have chicken patties for luncheon, and lots
+of that scrumptious chocolate icecream that's almost black.  Don't you
+love restaurant food, Nancy?  It's such fun to sit and watch the
+people, and wonder what they are going to do after luncheon, and what
+they are saying to each other, and where they live.  When I'm married I
+shall certainly live in town, and I'll have a box at the opera, and
+I'll carry a pair of those eye-glasses on jewelled
+sticks--what-do-you-call-'ems--and every morning I'll go down-town in
+my car and shop, and then I'll meet my husband for luncheon at Sherry's
+or the Plaza."
+
+"Of course you'll have a country-place on Long Island," suggested
+Nancy, with good-natured irony, which Alma took quite seriously.
+
+"Oh, yes.  With terraces and Italian gardens.  I _would_ love to be
+seen standing in a beautiful garden, with broad marble steps, and rows
+of poplar trees, and a sun-dial----"
+
+"For whose benefit?"
+
+"Oh, my own."
+
+"We're feeling rich to-day, aren't we?"
+
+"Well, I don't know anything that feels better than to be going to buy
+a new dress.  Shall we get the hat too, Nancy?"
+
+"What do you think?"
+
+Alma hesitated.
+
+"Well, I suppose we'd better wait.  It's funny how when you start
+spending money at all you want to get everything under the sun.  Of
+course, girls like Elise or Jane _do_ get everything they want----"
+
+"Exactly.  And when you're with them you feel that you must let go,
+too.  And if you can't afford it----"  Nancy shrugged her shoulders,
+and Alma finished for her:
+
+"It makes you miserable."
+
+"Or else," said Nancy, with a curl of the lip, "or else, if you aren't
+bothered with any too much pride, you'll do what that Margot Cunningham
+does.  She simply camps on the Porterbridges.  Elise is so good-natured
+that she lets Margot buy everything she likes and charge it to her, and
+Margot finds life so comfy there that she can't tear herself away.  I'd
+rather work my fingers to the bone than take so much as a pair of
+gloves given to me out of good-natured charity!"  Nancy's eyes
+sparkled.  Alma was silent.  There were times when Nancy's fierce,
+stubborn pride frightened her--sometimes the way her sister's lips
+folded together, and her small, cleft chin was lifted, made her fancy
+that there might be a resemblance between Nancy and old Mr. Prescott.
+Alma was the butterfly, and Nancy the bee; the butterfly no doubt
+wonders why the bee so busily stores away the honey won by thrift and
+industry, and, in all probability, the bee reads many a lesson to the
+gay-winged idler who clings to the sunny flower.  But to-day the bee
+relented.
+
+"Now, ma'am, consider yourself the owner of unlimited wealth," said
+Nancy, as they swung briskly into the concourse of the Grand Central
+Station.  "You're a regular Cinderella, and _I'm_ your godmother, who
+is going to perform the stupendously brilliant, mystifying act of
+turning twenty rolls of sitting-room wall-paper, and three coats of
+brown paint into--five yards of superb silk, two silver slippers, two
+silk stockings, and three yards of silver ribbon; or, one simple
+country maiden into a fashionable miss of entrancing beauty."
+
+"Nancy, you're the most angelic person!" squealed Alma.  "But aren't
+you going to get yourself something, too?  It makes me feel awfully
+mean to get new things when you have to wear that dowdy old yellow
+thing."
+
+"Dowdy, indeed.  It's grand.  'Miss Nancy Prescott was charming in a
+simple gown of mousseline-de-soie, which hung in the straight lines now
+so much in vogue.  Her only ornaments were a bouquet of rare flowers,
+contrasting exquisitely with the shade of her frock,--a toilette of
+unusual chic.  Miss Alma Prescott, Melbrook's noted beauty, was superb
+in a lavish creation'--You're going to be awfully lavish, and quite the
+belle of the ball."
+
+"You ought to have some new slippers, Nancy--a pair of gold ones would
+absolutely _make_ your dress."
+
+"My black ones are all right.  I'll put fresh bows on them," said
+Nancy, firm as a Trojan outwardly, though within her resolution
+wavered.  Dared she take another seven dollars?  She began to feel
+reckless.
+
+"Are you waited on, madam?"  The smooth voice of a saleswoman roused
+her from her calculations.
+
+"We want to see some blue taffeta--not awfully expensive."
+
+"Step this way.  We have something exquisite--five dollars a yard."
+
+"Oh, haven't you anything less than that?" stammered Nancy in dismay.
+Alma glanced at her reprovingly.
+
+"For heaven's sake, don't sound as if you hadn't a dollar to your name,
+or she'll just right-about-face and walk off," she whispered.  "We'll
+_look_ at the expensive silk, and then work around to the
+cheaper--explain that it's more what we want, and so on."
+
+"Yes, and the cheaper silk will look so impossible after we've seen the
+other that we'll be taking it," returned Nancy.  "_I_ know their wiles."
+
+"Here is a beautiful material--quite new," lured the saleswoman.  "A
+wonderful shade.  It will be impossible to duplicate.  See how it
+falls--as softly and gracefully as satin, but with more body to it.
+The other is much stiffer."
+
+"How--how much is it?" asked Nancy feebly.
+
+"Five-ninety-eight.  It's special, of course.  Later on the regular
+price will be six-fifty."
+
+"Isn't it _lovely_?" breathed Alma, touching the gleaming stuff with
+careful fingers.
+
+"Have--have you anything for about three dollars a yard?" asked Nancy,
+wishing that Alma would do the haggling sometimes.
+
+The saleswoman listlessly unrolled a yard or two from another bolt and
+held it up.
+
+"Is it for yourself, madam?  Or for the other young lady?"
+
+"It's for my sister.  Let me hold this against your hair, Alma."
+
+"It's not nearly so nice as the other, of course," observed Alma, in a
+casual tone.  "It's awfully stiff, and the color's sort of washed out.
+I really think----"
+
+"Oh, of course, this paler shade is not nearly so effective at night,"
+agreed the saleswoman, pouncing keenly upon her prey.  "See how
+beautifully this deeper color brings out the gold in the young lady's
+hair.  Would you like to take it to the mirror, miss?"
+
+"Oh, don't, Alma!" begged Nancy, in comical despair.  "Of course there
+isn't any comparison."  She felt herself weakening.  "I--I suppose this
+would really wear better too."
+
+"Of course it would," said Alma, quickly.  "That other stuff is so
+stiff it would split in no time."
+
+Five times five-ninety-eight--thirty dollars.  Nancy wrinkled her
+forehead, but she knew that she had succumbed even before she announced
+her surrender.  The saleswoman, watching her, lynx-eyed, smiled.  Alma
+preened herself in front of the long mirror, frankly admiring herself,
+with the soft, silken stuff draped around her shoulders.
+
+"All right," said Nancy.  "Give me five yards."
+
+"Charged?" purred the saleswoman.  But Nancy had no mind to have the
+gray ghost of her extravagance revisit her on the first of the month.
+
+"No, no!  I'll pay for it, and take it with me."  She counted out her
+little roll of bills, trying not to notice the pitiable way in which
+her purse shrank in, like the cheeks of a hungry man.
+
+"Is there nothing you would like for yourself, madam?" murmured the
+voice of the temptress.  "Here is some ravishing charmeuse--the true
+ashes-of-roses.  With your dark hair and eyes----"
+
+"Oh, no--no, thanks."  Nancy clutched Alma, and turned her head away
+from the shimmering, pearl-tinted fabric.  For all her stiff
+level-headedness, she was only human, and a girl with a healthy, ardent
+longing for beautiful finery; prudent she was, but prudence soon
+reaches its limits when the pressure of feminine vanity and exquisite
+luxury is brought to bear upon it.  There was only one course of
+resistance.  Nancy fled.
+
+"Now, slippers."  Alma skipped along beside her, hugging her precious
+bundles, with shining eyes, and cheeks aglow.  "I think I love slippers
+better than anything in the world.  Nancy, you're a perfect _lamb_."
+
+They tried on slippers.  Certainly Alma's tiny foot and slender ankle
+was a delightful object to contemplate as she turned it this way and
+that before the little mirror.
+
+"If you had a little buckle, miss--we have some very new rhinestone
+ornaments--I'd like to show you one--a butterfly set in a fan of silver
+lace.  Just a moment."
+
+Before Nancy could stop her the saleswoman had gone.
+
+"We won't get the buckles, you dear old thing," Alma said consolingly,
+bending the sole of her foot.  "We'll just look at them."
+
+Nancy smiled wryly.
+
+"I'd _like_ to get you everything in the shop--I hate to be stingy with
+you, dear; it's just this old thing," and she held up the shabby purse.
+
+"_Isn't_ that perfectly gorgeous?" shrieked Alma, as the saleswoman
+held a little jewelled dragon-fly, poised on a spray of silver lace,
+against her instep.
+
+"Gorgeous," echoed Nancy.
+
+"It's a very chic trimming--of course we use it only on the handsomer
+slippers," chanted the saleswoman.  "Now, we could put that on for you
+in five minutes, and really the expense would be small, considering
+that nothing more would be needed as an ornament, and it would be the
+smartest thing to wear--no trimming on the dress whatever."
+
+"How much would it be?" asked Alma.  "I--I can't take it now, but
+later----"
+
+"The buckles are five dollars, and with the lace fan it would come to
+seven.  I would advise you--the prices will go up in another month----"
+
+"Well, Alma----"  Nancy hesitated, made one last frantic grasp at her
+fleeting prudence and surrendered.  "Fourteen dollars.  All right.  You
+can take the buckles as a Christmas present from me.  I'll pay for
+those, and we'll be back for them after we've got some other things."
+
+"Nancy, you angel!  You lamb!  You duck!  You angelic dumpling!" crowed
+Alma.  "I never felt so absolutely luxurious in all my life."
+
+"I don't imagine you ever did," remarked Nancy; she was aghast at her
+own extravagance.  She judged herself harshly as the victim of the
+failing which she had so long combatted in her mother and sister.
+Every atom of the prudence with which she had armed herself seemed to
+be melting away like wax before a furnace.  She had already spent
+forty-four dollars, and there was still the silver ribbon to be bought,
+which would bring the sum up to forty-five at the very least.  She had
+originally intended to buy one or two small items with which to freshen
+up her own dress for the dance, but she stubbornly put aside the idea.
+
+"Nancy, darling, aren't you going to get yourself some slippers?"
+
+"No--I don't need them.  The ones I have are quite good."
+
+"I feel so mean, Nancy.  Do you think I'm horribly selfish?"
+
+"Selfish!  You aren't the least bit selfish, dear.  I can understand
+perfectly how you hate to go among all those rich girls without looking
+as well-dressed as any of them, when you're a thousand times prettier
+than the nicest looking one of them.  Besides, just this once----"  She
+paused, realizing that it was not a case of "just this once" at all.
+Pretty, new clothes and pocket money would be the barest necessities
+when they should be at Miss Leland's.  Why didn't her mother see the
+folly of sending them to a place where they would learn to want things,
+actually to need things, far beyond the reach of their little bank
+account, and where Alma, chumming with girls who had everything that
+feminine fancy could desire, would either be made miserable, or--she
+tried to rout her own practical thoughts.  Why was it that she was so
+unwilling to trust in rosy chance?  Why was it always she who had to
+bring the wet blanket of harsh common sense to dampen her mother's and
+sister's debonair trust in a smiling Providence?  Was she wrong after
+all?  She considered the lilies of the field, but somehow she could not
+believe that their example was the wisest one for impecunious human
+beings to follow.  Lilies could live on sun and dew, and they had
+nothing to do but wave in the wind.
+
+"Oh, look, Nancy--aren't those feather fans exquisite----"
+
+"Alma, don't you dare to peep at another showcase in this store, or
+I'll tie my handkerchief over your eyes and lead you out blindfolded
+like a horse out of a fire."
+
+"But _do_ look at those darling little bottles of perfume.  They're
+straight from Paris.  I can tell from those adorable boxes with the
+orange silk tassels.  Wouldn't you give anything on earth to have one?
+When I'm rich I'm going to have dozens of bottles--those slender
+crystal ones with enamel tops; and they'll stand in a row across the
+top of a Louis XVI dressing-table."  Nancy smiled at Alma's
+ever-recurring phrase, "When I'm rich."  She wondered if her butterfly
+sister had formed any clear notions of how that beatific state was to
+be realized.
+
+"Alma Prescott, there's the door, and thank heaven for it.  Have the
+goodness, ma'am, to go directly through it.  The street is immediately
+beyond, and that is the safest place for us two little wanderers at
+present."
+
+Forty-five dollars for just one evening's fun.
+
+Gold slippers would have been just the thing to wear with her yellow
+dress; but--well----
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+LADIES OF FASHION
+
+The little bedroom which Alma and Nancy shared together wore a gaily
+topsy-turvy appearance on that memorable night--quite as if it had
+succumbed to the mood of flighty joy which was in the air.  The
+dresser, usually a very model of good order--except when Alma had been
+rummaging about it unchecked--was strewn with hairpins, manicuring
+implements, snips of ribbon and the stems of fresh flowers; all the
+drawers were partly open, projecting at unequal distances, and giving
+glimpses of the girls' simple underwear, which had been ruthlessly
+overturned in frantic scramblings for such finery as they possessed.  A
+fresh, slightly scented haze of powder drifted up as Nancy briskly
+dusted her arms and shoulders, and then earnestly performed the same
+attentions for Alma.  Mrs. Prescott sat on the edge of the bed, alive
+with interest in the primping, and taking as keen a delight in her
+daughters' ball-going as she had done in her own preparations for
+conquest twenty years before.  As critical as a Parisian modiste, she
+cocked her pretty head on one side and surveyed the girls with an
+expression of alertness mingled with satisfaction--such as you might
+see on the face of a clever business man who watches the promising
+development of a smart plan, with elation, though not without an eye
+ready to detect the slightest hitch.
+
+Unquestionably she was justified in pinning the highest hopes on Alma's
+eventual success in life--if sheer exquisite prettiness can be a safe
+guarantee for such.  Alma, who had plainly fallen in love with herself,
+minced this way and that before the glass, blissfully conscious of her
+mother's and sister's unveiled delight in her beauty.  Her yellow hair,
+bright as gold itself spun into an aura of hazy filaments, was piled up
+on top of her head, so that curls escaped against the white, baby-like
+nape of her neck.  Her dress was truly a masterpiece, and if there had
+been a tinge of envy in Nancy's nature she might have regretted the
+skill with which she herself had succeeded in setting off Alma's
+prettiness, until her own good looks were pale, almost insignificant,
+beside it.  But Nancy was almost singularly devoid of envy and could
+look with the bright, impersonal eyes of a beauty-lover at Alma's
+distracting pink and white cheeks, at her blue eyes, which looked black
+in the gas-light, and at her round white neck and arms--the dress left
+arms and shoulders bare except for the impudent, short puffed sleeves
+which dropped low on the shoulder like those of an early Victorian
+beauty; anything but Victorian, however, was the brief, bouffant skirt,
+which showed the slim ankles and the little, arched feet, in their
+handsome slippers.
+
+"You're perfectly--gorgeous, Alma.  You've a legitimate right to be
+charmed with yourself," said Nancy, sitting down on the bed beside her
+mother to enjoy Alma's frank struttings and posings.
+
+"I am nice," agreed Alma naively, trying to suppress a smile of
+self-approval which, nevertheless, quirked the corners of her lips.
+"_You_ did it, though, Nancy darling.  I don't forget that, even if I
+do seem to be a conceited little thing."  She danced over and kissed
+Nancy's cheek lightly, her frock enchanting her with its crisp
+rustlings as she did so.  "Nancy, you _will_ get something nice,
+too,--the next time?"
+
+"You should have made up a new dress for to-night, anyhow, Nancy," said
+Mrs. Prescott, turning to inspect Nancy's appearance from the top of
+her head to the toes of her freshly ribboned slippers.  Nancy colored
+slightly.  It had not been a very easy task to overcome the temptation
+to "blow herself," as Alma would have debonairly expressed a foolish
+extravagance; and it was not particularly soothing to have that feat of
+economy found fault with.
+
+"If--if you think I look too dowdy, I--I'll stay at home, Mother," she
+said, in a quiet tone that betrayed a touch of hurt pride.  "You know
+it was out of the question for me to get another dress, and if you feel
+sensitive about my going to people like the Porterbridges in what I've
+got, why, it's absurd to attempt it at all."
+
+Mrs. Prescott was abashed; then in her quick, sweet, impulsive way--so
+like that of a thoughtless, lovable little girl--she put her arms
+around Nancy's straight young shoulders.
+
+"Don't be cross with me, darling.  I only said that because it hurts me
+to think that you have to deny yourself anything in the world.  You are
+so sweet, and so strong, and--and I love you so, my dear, that I cannot
+bear to think of your having to deny yourself the pretty things that
+are given to the daughters of so many other women."
+
+Instantly Nancy unbent, and, turning her head so that she could kiss
+her mother's soft hair, she whispered, with a tender little laugh:
+
+"Before you begin pitying us, dearest, you can--can just remember that
+other women's daughters haven't been given--a mother like you."  And
+then, because, just like a boy, she felt embarrassed at her own
+emotion, and the tears that had gathered in her eyes, she said briskly:
+
+"If anyone should ask me my candid opinion, I'd say that I'm rather
+pleased with myself--only some inner voice tells me that I'm not
+completely hooked.  Here, Mother----"  By means of an excruciating
+contortion she managed to indicate a small gap in the back of her dress
+just between the shoulder blades.
+
+"You do look awfully nice, Nancy," commented Alma; she paused
+reflectively a moment, and then added, "You know, I suppose that at
+first glance most people would say I was--was the prettier, you
+know--because I'm sort of doll-baby-looking, and pink and white, like a
+French bonbon; but an artist would think that you were really
+beautiful--I hit people in the eye, like a magazine cover, but you grow
+on them slowly like a--a Rembrandt or something."
+
+"Whew!  We've certainly been throwing each other bouquets broadcast
+to-night," laughed Nancy, who was tremendously pleased, nevertheless.
+"You'd better put your cloak on, Alma, and stop turning my head around
+backwards with your unblushing flattery.  Isn't that our coach now?"
+
+The sound of wheels on the wet gravel and the shambling cloppity-clop
+of horses' hoofs, had indeed announced the arrival of the "coach."
+
+"Darn it, that idiotic Peterson has sent us the most decrepit old nag
+in his stable," remarked Alma, looking out of the window as she slid
+her bare arms into the satin-lined sleeves of her wrap.  "I think he
+calls her 'Dorothea,' which means the 'Gift of God.'"
+
+"She looks like an X-ray picture of a baby dinosaur.  I hope to heaven
+she won't fall to pieces before we get within walking distance of the
+Porterbridges'," said Nancy.  "I think that so-called carriage she has
+attached to her must be the original chariot Pharaoh used when he drove
+after the Israelites."
+
+In a gay mood, the two sisters climbed into the ancient coupe, which
+smelt strongly of damp hay, and jounced away behind the erratic
+Dorothea, who started off at a mad gallop and then settled abruptly
+into her characteristic amble.
+
+A light, gentle, steady rain pattered against the windows, which
+chattered like the teeth of an old beggar on a wintry day.  The two
+girls, deliciously nervous, would burst into irrepressible giggles each
+time when, as they passed a street lamp, the ridiculously elongated
+shadow of Dorothea and the chariot scurried noiselessly ahead of them
+and was swallowed up in a stretch of darkness.
+
+"My dear, I'm scared _pink_!" breathed Alma, pinching Nancy's arm in a
+nervous spasm.  "My tummy feels just as if I were going down in an
+awfully quick elevator."
+
+"I don't see what _you_ are scared about," replied Nancy.  "_I_ almost
+wish this regal conveyance of ours _would_ break down."
+
+"It feels as if one of the wheels were coming off."
+
+"I guess they are all coming off; but it's been like that since the
+dark ages already, and I dare say it will last another century or so."
+
+"Look!  There's Uncle Thomas' house, now.  Doesn't it look exactly like
+something that Poe would write about?  That one light burning in the
+tower window, with all the rest of the house just a huge black shape,
+is positively gruesome."
+
+The two girls peered through the dirty little mica oval behind them at
+the strange old mansion, the bizarre turrets of which were silhouetted
+against the sky, where the edges of the dark clouds had parted, and the
+horizon shone with a paler, sickly light.
+
+"It is eerie looking.  I suppose old Uncle T. is up in that room poring
+away over his books, and the last thing he'd be thinking of is his two
+charming nieces bouncing off to an evening of giddy pleasure in this
+antique mail-cart, or whatever it is."
+
+"Oh, my dear!" Alma squealed faintly.  "We're getting there!  Oh, look
+at all the automobiles.  We can't go in in this dreadful looking thing."
+
+"All right.  You can get out and walk.  I say, do your hands feel like
+damp putty?"
+
+"_Do_ they!  I feel as if I were getting the measles.  Oh, here we are,
+Nancy!"  Alma's tone would have suggested that they had reached the
+steps of the guillotine.  Dorothea, alone, was unmoved, and almost
+unmoving.  With her poor old head dangling between her knees, she
+crawled slowly along the broad, well-lighted driveway of a very new and
+very imposing house, beset fore and aft by a train of honking and
+rumbling motors.  Nancy burst into a little breathy quaver of
+hysterical laughter.
+
+"We must try to be more like Dorothea," she giggled.  "Her beautiful
+composure is due either to an aristocratic pedigree or to her knowledge
+that she is going to die soon, and all this is the vanity of a world
+which passes."
+
+In spite of their inner agony of shyness, however, the two girls
+descended from the absurd old carriage at the broad steps, and reached
+the door, under the footmen's umbrellas, with every outward appearance
+of well-bred _sang-froid_.
+
+"I'm so glad you could come, Nancy.  Alma, how lovely you look.  Don't
+you want to go upstairs and take off your wraps?"  Elise Porterbridge,
+a tall, fat girl, dressed in vivid green, greeted them; and, with all
+the dexterity of a matronly hostess, passed them on into the chattering
+mob of youths and girls which crowded the wide, brightly lighted hail.
+Alma clutched Nancy's arm frantically as they squeezed their way
+through to the stairs.
+
+"Did you see a living soul that you knew besides Elise?" whispered Alma
+as they slipped off their wraps into the hands of the little maid.
+"Oh, it would be too awful to be a wall-flower after I've gone and
+gotten these lovely slippers and everything."
+
+"Don't be a goose.  This is a good time--don't you know one when you
+see it?  Here, pinch your cheeks a little, and stop looking as if you
+were going to have a chill.  You're the prettiest girl here, and that
+ought to give you some courage."
+
+While Nancy poked her dress and tucked in a stray wisp of hair, Alma
+stood eyeing the modish, self-assured young ladies who primped and
+chattered before the long mirrors around them, with the round solemn
+gaze of a hostile baby.  How could they be so cool, so absolutely
+self-contained?
+
+"Come on,--you look all right," said Nancy aloud, and Alma marvelled at
+the skill with which her sister imitated that very coolness and
+indifference.  If she had known it, Nancy was inwardly quaking with the
+nervous dread that attacks every young girl at her first big party like
+a violent stage fright.
+
+They made their way slowly down the broad stairs, passing still more
+pretty, chattering debonair girls who were calling laughing, friendly
+greeting to the young men below.
+
+From one of the other rooms a small orchestra throbbed beneath the hum
+of voices; the scent of half a dozen French perfumes mingled and rose
+on the hot air; and the brilliant colors of girls' dresses stirred and
+wove in and out like the changing bits of glass in a kaleidoscope.
+
+"Er--I say--good-evening, Miss Prescott.  I got to you first, so I've a
+right to the first dance."  It was Frank Barrows, the hero of Alma's
+potato adventure, who claimed Alma before her little silver foot had
+reached the last step.  A lean young man, with sleek, blond hair, a
+weak chin, and the free-and-easy, all-conquering manner of a youth who
+has been spoiled by girls ever since he put on long trousers and
+learned to run his own car, he looked at Alma with that look of
+startled admiration which to a young girl is a sweeter flattery than
+any that words can frame.  She looked up at Nancy with a glance of
+joyous, innocent triumph, and then, putting her plump little hand on
+her partner's arm, and instantly meeting his gallantry with the pretty,
+utterly unconscious coquetry of a born flirt, she moved off.
+
+Nancy, still standing at the foot of the stairs, watched the yellow
+head as it passed among the heads of the other dancers.  That quick,
+happy glance of Alma's had said, "Forgive me for being so pretty.  You
+are better, and finer, and more beautiful--but they haven't found it
+out yet."
+
+She stood alone, terribly shy, her smooth cheeks flushing scarlet, and
+her bright eyes searching timidly for some friendly corner where she
+could run and hide herself away for the rest of the evening.  Without
+Alma beside her to be petted and protected, she looked almost
+pathetically just what she was--a modest young girl, who was peculiarly
+lovely and appealing, as she stood waiting with a beating heart to
+catch a friendly eye in all that terrible, gay, selfish throng of
+pleasure-seekers.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+A RETICENT GENTLEMAN--AND MISS BANCROFT
+
+With only the one aim of getting to harbor by hook or crook, Nancy, her
+cheeks burning with shyness, edged her way along the wall.  She would
+not have felt half so much alone if she had been dropped into the
+middle of the Sahara desert, and, while her little feet tingled with
+the rhythm of the music, she surrendered herself to the unhappy
+conviction that she was doomed to be a wall-flower.
+
+She did not know these people; she felt as if she could never know
+them.  Everything in their manner, their speech and their dress
+suggested a foreignness to her own nature that could never be bridged,
+unless she herself changed and became another being.  It was something
+that she could not define, this difference; it was simply something
+that grew out of a different way of thinking and feeling about life.
+All these people seemed to make pleasure their business, the most
+important purpose of their existence, and this attitude, expressed in
+the very way that the girls carried themselves, in the tones of their
+voices, in their light scraps of inconsequential and not very clever
+talk, made her feel strange beyond description.
+
+She stood near a group of palms under the arch of the staircase,
+watching the faces all about her, longing one minute to be at home,
+curled up with a book on her shabby, comfortable window-seat, and the
+next, that she might be drawn into the centre of all that bubbling,
+companionable enjoyment.  Now she caught a glimpse of Alma, who was
+standing near the door of the dancing-room, bantering and coquetting
+with a little cluster of youths who had gathered about her, heaven
+knows where from or how, like flies about a jar of new honey; it was
+plainly Alma's natural environment, in which she revelled like a joyous
+young fish in a sunny pool.
+
+"So that pretty little creature is George Prescott's daughter?"  The
+question, spoken in a rather deep and penetrating voice, carried
+clearly to Nancy's ears, and she turned.  At a little distance from
+her, seated on a small couch, sat Mrs. Porterbridge, a lean woman with
+a tight-lipped, aquiline face, and painfully thin neck and arms, and
+the old lady who had put the question.  A quite remarkable-looking old
+lady, Nancy thought, enormously fat, dressed in purple velvet, her
+huge, dimpled arms and shoulders billowing, out of it, like the whipped
+cream on top of some titanic confection.  Two small, plump, tapering
+hands clasped a handsome feather fan against her almost perpendicular
+lap.  Two generous chins completely obliterated any outward evidences
+of neck, so that her head seemed to have been set upon her shoulders
+with the naive simplicity of a dough-man's; yet for all this, one
+glance at her keen, intelligent face, with its sleepy, twinkling eyes
+and humorous, witty mouth, was enough to assure one that, whoever she
+might be, she was not an ordinary old lady by any means.  One guessed
+at once that she had seen much of the world in her sixty-five or
+seventy years, that she had enjoyed every moment of the entertainment,
+and that while she probably required everyone else to respect public
+opinion, she felt comfortably privileged to disregard it herself
+whenever she pleased.  She had been busily discussing everyone who
+attracted her attention, disdaining to lower her sonorous voice or to
+conceal in any way the fact that she was gossiping briskly.  Young and
+old alike hastened up to her to pay their respects, and it was evident
+from their manner of eager deference that she was a rather important
+old person, whose keen and fearless tongue made her good opinion worth
+gaining.
+
+At present she had centred her lively interest upon Alma, and Nancy
+could not resist the temptation of listening to her remarks, especially
+since the old lady was obviously perfectly willing to let anyone and
+everyone hear her who might have reason to listen.
+
+"That is little Alma Prescott," Mrs. Porterbridge was replying.  "She
+is charmingly pretty, isn't she?"
+
+"The image of her mother.  Tell me something about them.  It's
+ridiculous, isn't it, how we can live for years within a stone's throw
+of our neighbors without ever knowing whether their Sunday clothes are
+made of silk or calico.  George Prescott used to be my particular
+favorite, when he was a youngster.  I remember when he married that
+empty-pated little beauty--I gave him tons of my choicest advice--was
+absolutely prodigal of my finest gems of wisdom; but when I saw
+her--well, I knew very well that there would be ups and downs--she
+should have married an Indian nabob--but, thought I, I might as well
+shout to the north wind to be placid as to tell him to give her up and
+find himself some sensible, excellent creature, who could mend his
+socks and turn his old suits for him.  He would rather have lived on
+burnt potatoes and bacon, with that charming little spendthrift, than
+have enjoyed all the blessings of good housekeeping at the hands of the
+most estimable creature we could have found for him.  I do like that
+spirit in a young man, however much my excellent common sense may
+disapprove of it.
+
+"I saw nothing of George after his marriage.  I was too fond of him to
+stand around offering advice, when he couldn't possibly make any use of
+it.  I should probably have lost my temper just as Tom Prescott
+did--and I cannot endure to be in such a ridiculous position.  I had a
+notion that Lallie Prescott didn't live here any more."
+
+"I believe that the family suffers rather keen financial difficulties,"
+said Mrs. Porterbridge.  "The girls go out very little--are quite
+isolated, in fact."
+
+"You mean that they are hard up--don't use those genteel euphemisms, my
+dear,--I can't understand 'em.
+
+"I'm sorry.  It was inevitable, of course, but I'm one of the few
+beings that sincerely regret seeing other people reaping what they've
+sown.  I've always avoided my own deserts so successfully."  Her big,
+jolly laugh rang out at this.  "There are two girls, I remember.  Both
+pretty?"
+
+"Yes, indeed," replied Mrs. Porterbridge, in the unenthusiastic tone
+with which the mother of a rather plain daughter will praise the beauty
+of another woman's daughter.
+
+"Hum.  Well, that's distinctly _something_.  I really couldn't work up
+any heartfelt interest in them if they were ugly--though, of course, I
+understand that beauty is only skin deep, and handsome is as handsome
+does, and all that--whoever invented those saws must have been
+unbearably ugly--I've always suspected that it was some plain, jealous
+old wife of King Solomon who got very philosophical in her old age.
+Now, I'd really like to know what little Lallie Prescott is going to do
+with them."
+
+Mrs. Porterbridge gave a dry, affected little laugh, looking at Alma,
+who was waltzing again with the obviously infatuated Frank Barrows.
+
+"Well, I imagine that she is going to do all that she can to marry them
+off as advantageously as possible, and I dare say that both of them----"
+
+"Now, don't say anything cattish, my dear," interrupted the old lady,
+quite sharply, a sudden coldness routing the twinkle in her merry eyes.
+"I always know when you are going to say something that will annoy me,
+and nothing annoys me more than to hear an older woman say anything
+unkind about a young girl.  I tell you this because I'm sure that you
+don't want to make me angry.  If you are trying to tell me that Lallie
+Prescott is a schemer in regard to the future of her two daughters,
+why, I should be very much surprised to learn anything else.  We are
+all schemers for our children--and just as in love and war, we consider
+everything fair so long as it works for their advantage.  But----"
+
+Nancy, her cheeks burning, heard no more.  In a last desperate effort
+at escape, she turned and fled unseen through the nearest doorway.
+
+At first she did not realize where she was; then she discovered that
+she had chanced upon a veritable haven of refuge, a large, quiet room,
+cosily lighted by a reading-lamp, furnished with huge, paternal-looking
+armchairs and divans, and lined on three of its walls from floor to
+ceiling with whole regiments of books.  The fourth wall was monopolized
+by a great stone fireplace, where three or four tree-trunks smouldered
+softly, popping every now and then into small explosions of ruddy
+sparks.  The smell of leather, of wood smoke, and even the delicate
+musty smell of the rich, yellowed paper of old books mingled with the
+hazy fragrance of a Turkish cigarette.  Nancy was too much concerned
+with her own thoughts to wonder where the source of that comfortable
+aroma oL tobacco lay--it was to her just a part of the atmosphere of
+books and quiet and leather chairs which she always associated with her
+memories of her father.  Revelling in the sensation of being alone, as
+she blissfully fancied herself to be, she wandered about looking at the
+titles of the books, now and again taking down a volume and turning the
+leaves.  Here she chanced upon a delightful old edition of "Pickwick
+Papers," bound in worn leather, there a copy of the "Vicar of
+Wakefield," with yellowed pages, and quaint, old-fashioned print, and
+the sight of these old friends, associated as they were with the
+happiest and most tranquil hours of her life, soothed to a certain
+extent her feelings which had been cruelly wounded by the conversation
+she had overheard.
+
+But she was still sore and angry.  Still holding the "Vicar of
+Wakefield" in her hand, she stood, staring absently into the fire.
+
+"So that's what people will be saying about us--that we are pushing and
+scheming, and--and trying to make friends just to use them for our
+advantage," she thought bitterly, recalling Mrs. Porterbridge's
+unfriendly little insinuation.
+
+Sensitive and proud as she was, that unfinished remark, made in the
+cold, hard tone of a woman who, judging the whole world by herself,
+credited everyone alike with self-interested and worldly motives, had
+inflicted a wound that would be long in healing.  It was not indeed on
+her own account that she resented it so bitterly, but because of her
+mother and Alma, whose actions, she knew, could be so misinterpreted
+and ascribed to quite false motives.  She knew, too, less by experience
+than by instinct, that beneath all the pleasures and gaiety which Alma
+craved so eagerly, would flow that bitter undercurrent of cynical
+comment made by people who had so long been self-seeking that they
+could not believe in the artlessness of a young girl's simple thirst
+for enjoyment.
+
+Busy with these thoughts, a little strange and mature perhaps for her
+age, she was quite unconscious of two interesting facts.  First, that
+from an armchair just beyond the radius of the lamplight, the source of
+the cigarette smoke was regarding her with mingled astonishment and
+approval, and, second, that she herself was making a very charming
+picture as she stood in the deep, mellow glow of the firelight.
+
+A small man, with a kind, whimsical, clever face, was looking at her
+with a pair of singularly bright brown eyes--eyes which had the direct,
+unwavering, gentle gaze of a person who has the gift of reading the
+meaning of faces and expressions to which others are blind.  Indeed, so
+clearly had he guessed the trend of the thoughts which underlay the
+seriousness of Nancy's sensitive face, that he felt almost like an
+eavesdropper.  Suddenly she jerked her head and saw him.  He stood up.
+
+"I--I beg your pardon," he apologized, still with the sensation of
+having heard something that had not been meant for his ears.  "You
+didn't know I was here, and I was rather at a loss as to how I should
+break it to you."
+
+Nancy had flushed to the edge of her hair.
+
+"That--that's all right," she stammered.  "I--I mean, I should
+apologize to you.  You were reading."  She began to move away toward
+the door again, but he stopped her hastily.
+
+"You mustn't go, and you mustn't for a moment think you've disturbed
+me.  I haven't any business to be in here anyway, because I think I was
+invited to entertain and be entertained like any respectable guest.  I
+don't know what they do to unmannerly, unsociable creatures who sneak
+off for a book and a smoke from the scenes of revelry, but I'm guilty,
+and deserve to die the death, or whatever it is."
+
+Nancy laughed.  When he talked he had a droll way of wrinkling up his
+forehead, and then suddenly breaking into a beaming, mischievous grin,
+like a schoolboy.
+
+"I'm guilty, too."
+
+"Yes,--and really ever so much more so than I am; because you're
+deliberately robbing at least ninety-nine per cent. of the guests of a
+part of their evening's pleasure, whereas, my absence is of so little
+importance one way or the other that, although I've been in here the
+better part of an hour already, there hasn't been even a whimper of
+protest.  It's been decidedly injurious to my _amour-propre_.  I had
+hoped, when you came in, that you had been sent by the unanimous vote
+of all present to request my immediate return to the regions of
+festivity.  I was prepared to be coy--but not adamantine.  Imagine my
+chagrin and dismay when it gradually dawned on me not only that you
+hadn't come for any such flattering purpose, but even that you hadn't
+the smallest notion I was here.  As far as you were concerned I was of
+less significance than a cockroach."
+
+"But that's not bad--a cockroach would be of awful significance to me,"
+said Nancy, with a laugh.
+
+"We have caught each other red-handed in an overwhelming breach of
+manners," continued he, severely.  "But then, look at it this way--here
+we are, each having a good time in our own way.  Now it seems to me
+that a hostess could ask no more of a guest than that he find his own
+entertainment--if he seeks it by ambling out into the garden to weed up
+wild onions, why, well and good----"
+
+"You are only trying to dazzle me with a false argument in
+self-defense," said Nancy.
+
+"You should be grateful to me for furnishing such a good one, since
+you've need of one yourself, ma'am.  But if you don't like it, why then
+I shall change my mind.  As a matter of fact, the idea of dancing has
+suddenly appealed to me very strongly--since Providence has at last
+provided me with a--well, with a more delightful partner than I should
+have dared to hope for.  And they are playing a very charming waltz.
+Will you dance with me?"
+
+He made a graceful little old-fashioned bow, and offered her his arm.
+Then he smiled.
+
+"I--I haven't introduced myself yet.  Do you mind?  I should have done
+it in the beginning, but I couldn't think of any graceful way of
+hinting at my name, and it's so horribly clumsy just to say pointblank,
+'My name's George Arnold.  What's yours?'"
+
+"But there isn't any other way," answered Nancy, a little shyly, but
+laughing, too, "unless we both go to Mrs. Porterbridge and ask her to
+introduce us.  My name is Nancy--Anne Prescott."
+
+"There now--it's perfectly simple, isn't it?  I never could understand
+why there should be any formal to-do about telling two people each
+other's names.  Do you know, the very minute you came in--perhaps it
+was from the way you looked at those dear old books--I felt as
+if--well, as if we ought to be friends.  You are fond of them, aren't
+you--of books--really fond of them?"
+
+"I love those old, shabby ones.  They--they looked so very friendly."
+
+He stole a keen glance at her face, and smiled gently at what it told
+him.  Then, as she clung to his arm, he guided her dexterously through
+the crowd to the dancing floor.
+
+After that first dance the whole evening changed for Nancy.  She had
+half doubted that her companion would be a good dancer, but in two
+moments that doubt was routed.  Gliding smoothly, weightlessly as if to
+the gentle rhythm of a wave, they circled through the moving swarm of
+dancers; Nancy's cheeks flushing like two poppies and her eyes
+glistening with the exhilaration of the music.  Her timidity had left
+her; she felt warm, vivacious and attractive, and it seemed perfectly
+natural that after that first waltz she had partners for every dance.
+
+Mr. Arnold danced with no one else.  When other partners claimed her,
+he retired to the doorway, and stood with his arms folded, surveying
+the scene with his whimsical, absent-minded smile; but evidently he
+regarded it as his right to have each waltz with her.
+
+"My aunt has ordered me to present you to her," he said, when he had at
+length led her into a corner for an ice, and a moment's chat.  "For
+some reason she has evidently taken a great fancy to you at sight, and
+she is giving me no peace.  She is a very peremptory and badly spoiled
+old lady, but it's impossible to resist her.  I told her that she might
+frighten you to death, and that then you'd blame me."
+
+"You _didn't_!" cried Nancy, horrified.
+
+"Indeed I did.  I've had the experience before--and I told her that I'd
+be hanged if I assumed the responsibility of surrendering any
+unsuspecting person into her clutches without giving them fair warning.
+But, seriously, she is a very dear lady,--though an eccentric one--and
+she has been saying extremely nice things about you.  Besides--she
+asked me to tell you that she knew your father, and that _she_ loved
+him long before _you_ were born."
+
+Something in his softened, gentle tone went to Nancy's heart.  She put
+down her ice.
+
+"Will you take me now?  I think I know--I mean I've seen your aunt
+already."
+
+"She is a very remarkable person.  She can be more terrifying--and more
+tender, than any woman in the world.  Utterly fearless, something of a
+tyrant--possibly because she has never been denied anything she wanted
+in her life.  She simply doesn't accept denials.  If she had been a man
+she might have been a Pitt, or a Napoleon.  As she is, she is a mixture
+of Queen Elizabeth--and Queen Victoria."
+
+The amazing individual, described by this brief biographical preface,
+who was still enthroned on the coquettish little French couch, and who
+was now consuming a pink ice with naive relish, was indeed the old lady
+in purple--otherwise, Miss Elizabeth Bancroft, of Lowry House (for some
+reason she had always been given this somewhat English style of
+designation; possibly because she was the last of her name to be
+identified with the magnificent collections for which Lowry House, the
+American roof-tree of aristocratic English colonists, had been famous
+for more than a hundred years).
+
+As Nancy stood before her, she looked up at the girl keenly, her little
+blue eyes diminished in size by the thick lenses of her pince-nez.
+Then she handed her ice to Mr. Arnold without even glancing at him, and
+held out both her plump white hands to Nancy.  Her whole face softened,
+with the dimpling, comfortable smile of a motherly old nurse.
+
+"Oh, my dear child--if you were only a boy I could believe you were
+George again--my George, your father--not this young rascal.  Come, sit
+down beside me.  I shan't keep you long.  Have you been having a good
+time, my dear?"
+
+She was not a terrible old lady at all.  On the contrary, with
+wonderful skill, with cosy, affectionate little ways, with her jolly
+laugh, and her droll stories, she had succeeded in less time than it
+takes to tell in completely winning Nancy to her.  And somehow,
+although she appeared to be doing all the talking herself, although she
+touched so lightly and so adroitly that she hardly seemed to touch at
+all on any topic that was delicately personal to the girl, she had
+managed within a brief five minutes to glean a hundred little facts,
+which, by piecing together in her keen old mind, gave her more
+knowledge concerning the Prescotts than another person could have come
+by in a week's diligent pumping.
+
+
+"George, my dear----"
+
+"Yes, Aunt Eliza."
+
+"Oh, nothing.  I wish to goodness you were a woman.  It just occurred
+to me that you can't possibly understand what I was going to say to
+you, so never mind about listening to me.  Smoke, if you want to, and
+let me think in peace."
+
+"Very well."  From Mr. Arnold's docile submissiveness it might be
+surmised that he, too, wanted to think in peace.  Miss Bancroft's
+lumbering, impressive coupe rumbled along over the wet roads toward
+Lowry House; its two occupants buried in that mood of silence which
+only two very sympathetic beings know how to respect.  Presently Miss
+Bancroft burst out:
+
+"The child is quite charming.  I shall give Tom a good sound piece of
+my mind.  To-morrow."
+
+George Arnold grunted.
+
+"It's only fair sportsmanship to give him twelve hours' warning."
+
+"Poor Lallie Prescott.  Like most silly women, she's going to try to
+beat Providence by pushing them forward into premature rivalry with
+girls who have every financial advantage over them, ruin their
+contentment, so that they will be ready to fling away their happiness
+on the first little whippersnapper who looks as if he could give them a
+trip to Paris and a season in Cannes every year.  I admire her fighting
+spirit, but it's hopelessly misdirected."
+
+"Am I meant to understand you, Aunt Eliza?"
+
+"No.  Don't even listen to me.  Nancy has too much sense for a girl of
+her age, and that exquisite little Alma has none.  Tut-tut.  I find
+that I must interfere."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+MISS BANCROFT BEARDS THE OGRE
+
+Miss Bancroft had not made her solemn declaration lightly.  She never
+made any announcements of her intentions without weighty consideration;
+consequently she was a woman who meant what she said, and meant it
+thoroughly.  Moreover, she never procrastinated; she thought in a
+straight line, and she acted in a straight line.
+
+Like most women, she took a healthy human delight in "interfering";
+but, unlike the majority of her sex, she indulged very rarely.  When,
+however, she had made up her mind on the point of allowing herself to
+concern herself in other people's business, she experienced the
+exquisite relish of a strictly self-controlled gamester, who allows
+himself to play only rarely so that he may enjoy his sport with that
+peculiar zest which only long abstinence can whet.
+
+On a sunny, warm September day, mellow with the promise of an Indian
+summer, Miss Bancroft, smart, though rotund, in lavender linen, set out
+on her pilgrimage to the house of Thomas Prescott.
+
+"I see that you aren't above the traditional wiles of your sex, Aunt,"
+commented George Arnold, looking up from his book, and surveying her
+with twinkling eyes, from the long wicker porch chair, where he had
+been dozing in the sun.  "You've rigged yourself out in full panoply.
+That's a jaunty little parasol you have."
+
+Miss Bancroft, standing on the broad steps, put up her parasol at this,
+to shade the fine texture of her gaily beflowered straw hat from the
+sun, and then glanced around at her nephew with a demure smile.
+
+"I make a point of looking my best always when I'm going to see Tom
+Prescott.  Of course he thinks me a sensible woman, a remarkably
+reasonable woman, and all that nonsense; but I like to leave him with
+at least a half-formed notion that I'm surprisingly well preserved,
+even if I have rather lost my waist-line.  There was a time, you
+know----" the demure smile quirked the corners of her big, mobile
+mouth, and sparkled impishly in her eyes; then with a little wag of her
+head, she ran down the steps like a fat, jolly schoolgirl.
+
+George Arnold, leaning back against a chintz cushion, watched the
+portly, festive figure that moved away under the trees of the long
+drive.  Miss Bancroft usually seemed to roll slowly, but efficiently,
+along on wheels as ponderous and impressive as an old-fashioned
+stage-coach.  He caught a last glimpse of lavender and white through
+the shrubs that bordered the end of the lawn.  He felt a good deal of
+interest in this pilgrimage of his aunt's, although he had no very
+clear idea of the purpose of it.  It had something to do with two very
+pretty young girls whom he had seen at an otherwise stupid dance the
+night before.  One of the girls looked like a Dresden doll, the other
+had dark eyes, and a direct, shy, almost boyish smile.  Her name was
+Anne--Nancy.  Nancy suited her much better.  He had thought about her
+several times.  For no particular reason--she was hardly eighteen, and
+he was, well, he was thirty-three, though that was neither here nor
+there.  It was simply that he liked her rather better than one likes
+most girls of that age.  She had a way of listening to a man without
+that stupid, flustered expression, as though she was only wondering
+what in the world she should say when it should be her turn to talk.
+She liked books.  He wondered if she knew that he wrote them.  Of
+course he wasn't world-famous, but it might interest her to know that
+he was the George Arnold whose collections of exquisitely delicate
+children's stories had already been translated into six foreign
+languages, "including the Scandinavian."
+
+He smiled to himself at the naive vanity which had prompted this
+thought; and chastised it by telling himself that it was only too
+likely that her ignorance or knowledge of what he did or was were
+matters of like indifference to her.
+
+Meantime, Miss Bancroft, puffing a little under the combined
+difficulties of avoirdupois and a beaming September sun, was looking
+with an almost pathetic anticipation at the rich cool shadows beneath
+which slept the rambling mansion of Thomas Prescott.
+
+"I shall order some tea.  A man is always so much more amenable to
+reason over a tea-table--and for my part, I'll not survive half an hour
+without a little light refreshment.  I suppose I'll have to listen to a
+long discourse on the origin of the Slavic races or the religious
+customs of the Aztecs, until I can get him down to argue with me on his
+duty toward his fellow creatures.  I hope to Heaven that his principles
+are drowsy to-day.  I can't bear it if I have to combat a lot of
+principles.  It's absolutely heathenish to have principles in warm
+weather anyway.  Of course they are the proper things to have, but,
+dear me, they _are_ such nuisances.  It's all right to have them about
+yourself, I suppose, but to have them about other people is priggish,
+and quite useless, so far as I can see.  My observation has taught me
+that if you like a person it makes no difference whether their
+principles coincide with your own or not, or even if they have none at
+all; and if you don't like a person, it's downright irritating to have
+to approve of them."  Miss Bancroft's mental grammar, like much of her
+spoken grammar, was inaccurate, of course; as in other matters, she
+held rule to scorn, when the rule interfered with her personal
+conception of what she was trying to make clear to other people or to
+herself.
+
+Under the vigorous thrust of her plump, direct forefinger, the
+door-bell pealed clearly in the cool remote regions of the house.
+Standing under the arch of the Norman doorway, she surveyed the broad,
+shade-flecked lawns with interest and a sort of irritable appreciation.
+Somewhere under the trees a gardener was raking the drive and burning
+neat piles of warm, brown leaves, from which the pungent smoke ascended
+in sinuous blue spirals, like languorously dancing phantoms of the dead
+leaves; and the pleasant, rhythmic sound of the rake on the gravel
+intensified the sober peaceful silence peculiar to that bachelor's
+domain.
+
+The door was opened.
+
+"Tell Mr. Prescott that it's Miss Bancroft.  Nonsense, I shan't sit
+down in the drawing-room at all--it makes me feel like a member of the
+Ladies' Aid come to petition a subscription for a new church carpet or
+something.  Tell Mr. Prescott that I'll be out on the porch."
+
+"Will you come through this way, then, madam?" suggested the old
+butler, meekly.
+
+Miss Bancroft followed him, sighing a little with relief as the
+coolness of the great hall, with its smell of old, polished wood and
+waxed floors, closed about her.
+
+"And, William," she called pathetically after the retreating butler,
+"do put the kettle on!"
+
+On her way through the house she passed a stately succession of large
+rooms.  A handsome drawing-room, with a polished parquetry floor, fit
+for the dainty crimson heels of a laced and furbelowed French coquette;
+its great glass chandelier shrouded in white tarlatan; the dining-room,
+with high-wainscoted walls, on which hung three or four astonishingly
+valuable and even beautiful pictures by masters of the eighteenth
+century English school.  For all its impressive grandeur, the long
+table, covered with a rare piece of Italian brocade, was, with the
+single carved chair set at the distant end, a barren table, indeed, for
+a man whom Miss Bancroft knew to be possessed of one of the warmest,
+tenderest and most affection-craving hearts in the whole world.
+
+"Principles--fiddlesticks!" she observed aloud.  "Tst!"
+
+A living-room, in which no one ever lived, a writing-room, in which no
+one ever wrote, and long halls, wainscoted in dark oak and quiet as
+those of a college library, whose silence was never broken by the light
+staccato footsteps of gay feet, or the murmur of roguish voices.  But
+the air of pathos which all these things wore seemed to rise from the
+fact that they had been planned and secured not for the enjoyment of a
+lonely old man, but for some happy purpose that had never been
+realized.  They seemed to wear an expression of disappointment, even of
+apology for existing so uselessly.
+
+"Tut!  How can anyone be patient with a man of principles," again
+commented Miss Bancroft; but her face had grown a little sad.
+
+She was rocking gently back and forth in the shade of the cool stone
+porch, when the sound of footsteps at last reached her ears, and she
+looked up with the warm smile of a guest who knows she is always
+welcome.
+
+"Elizabeth!  This is a very great pleasure.  I thought you had
+forgotten me!"
+
+"You deserve to be forgotten, my dear friend.  Ah, now you've disarmed
+me, though.  I've just conscience enough to have to tell you that I've
+come this time with ulterior motives."
+
+"I can find fault with no motives of yours, so long as they prompt you
+to visit me.  I look forward to my little chats with you as a child
+looks forward to his Saturday treats."
+
+"My dear Tom, your gift of saying delightful things is one of the
+wonders of the age.  Here you never see a woman from one year's end to
+the other, and yet you can turn a compliment as charmingly as though
+you practised on the fairest in the land every evening of your life."
+
+"'In my youth, said the Father----'" quoted the old gentleman with a
+twinkle.  "However, let's hear your ulterior motives first, my dear
+Elizabeth, so that afterwards we can chat with unburdened minds."
+
+"No--no, I refuse to beard you until we have some tea.  Thank goodness,
+here's William bringing it now.  I took the liberty of ordering it,
+Tom."
+
+"You took no liberties at all--you merely assumed your privileges.
+Tut-tut!  Tea.  You women, with all your notions and your injurious
+habits--how very delightful it is to be near you!"
+
+"To hear you talk, Tom, how could _anyone_ suspect that you were a man
+of principles!" cried Miss Bancroft.  "How could anyone dream that you
+were hard, and austere and--and unimaginative!"  He looked at her in
+mild astonishment.
+
+He was a small old man, rather delicate in build, with the blunt broad
+hands of a worker, and a high, smooth, massive forehead, from which his
+perfectly white hair fell back, long and almost childishly soft and
+fine.  His eyes, set deep under the sharply defined bone of his
+projecting brow, wore the gentle, far-away expression noticeable in
+many near-sighted people; but his chin contradicted their softness, and
+there was a hint of obstinacy in his close-set mouth and rather long
+upper lip.  He was dressed negligently, and indeed almost shabbily, and
+he made no apologies for his appearance; since he never gave a thought
+to it himself, he could not consider what other people might think of
+it.  His greatest hobby, lingering with him from earlier years, was
+chemistry, and he spent virtually all his time in the laboratory which
+he had fitted up in one of the odd towers that decorated his house.
+His coat and trousers would have given a far less observant person than
+Sherlock Holmes a clue to this favorite occupation of his, stained and
+burned as they were with acids.
+
+"Do you eat your _dinner_ in those clothes?" demanded Miss Bancroft.
+
+"Why?  What's the matter with them?  Why not eat dinner in 'em?  My
+dear Elizabeth, surely at this late date you haven't taken it into your
+head to reform my habits?"
+
+"I don't know but that I have," replied Miss Bancroft with a touch of
+grimness.
+
+"Is that your ulterior motive?  I suspected it.  Tell me what you meant
+when you accused me just now of being hard and austere and
+unimaginative.  Why unimaginative?"
+
+"No really intelligent woman would ever try to explain anything so
+subtle to a man.  I mean that you are unimaginative because you allow
+yourself to be rigid----"
+
+"Rigid?  Rigid about what?"
+
+"About your principles.  I like you, Tom--you know how much.  I admire
+you more than any man I have ever known, and I have known a good many
+remarkable men.  But one thing I cannot forgive you is your principles."
+
+"My principles?  When did I ever offend you with principles?"
+
+Miss Bancroft poured herself another cup of tea, and laid a second
+piece of bread-and-butter neatly on the side of her saucer.
+
+"Come," said Mr. Prescott, with a keen glance at her.  "Come, it's not
+like you, Elizabeth, to beat about the bush.  What can this matter be
+which you find so difficult to broach in plain English?"
+
+Miss Bancroft hesitated a moment.  It touched her vanity to be accused
+of beating about the bush, since she took an especial pride in her
+reputation of being a woman who never minced matters, and who always
+made a direct and fearless attack.
+
+Then she said, simply:
+
+"I came to talk to you about--George's daughters, Tom."
+
+There was a short silence.
+
+"It's not like you, Elizabeth, to--to touch upon a matter so very
+delicate," remarked Mr. Prescott, quietly, his lips tightening
+slightly.  "Of course I can understand how my attitude in regard to
+them must appear to you, but I fancied that there existed between you
+and me a silent agreement that this was one subject which was never to
+be mentioned."
+
+"My dear Tom, you know that under ordinary circumstances I am not an
+interfering woman; therefore you must realize that I should never have
+spoken of this to you without the best of reasons for doing so.  But I
+feel that you are allowing certain principles, excellent no doubt in
+themselves, but wrong in your particular application to them, to thwart
+your own happiness; to say nothing of depriving others of the
+advantages which it is in your power to bestow."  Miss Bancroft was
+very serious now.  As she spoke she leaned over and laid her fat little
+hand earnestly on the old man's shabby sleeve.  He said nothing, and
+she continued:
+
+"There are two young girls, charming--beautiful, indeed--the daughters
+of a man you loved far more even than most fathers love their
+first-born sons----"
+
+"Don't!" exclaimed Mr. Prescott, sharply, almost fiercely.  "Don't
+speak to me of that, Elizabeth.  Can't you realize that just to mention
+my--George recalls all my old rancor against that little, heartless
+spendthrift who ruined him--_killed_ him----" his voice rose hoarsely,
+then making an effort to control himself, he went on in a quieter tone:
+
+"It's very difficult for me to discuss this with you, Elizabeth."
+
+"I'm sorry, Tom.  But you have no right to--it's a matter of your own
+happiness as much as theirs--and I would be no friend of yours if I
+were not willing and anxious to risk your anger for the sake of
+righting this mistake you are making."
+
+"My nieces are not in want.  And familiarity with a certain degree of
+poverty is the source of a wisdom that safeguards men and women from
+follies that lead to many of the greatest miseries on earth."
+
+"Want, my dear Tom, is a purely relative condition," said Miss
+Bancroft.  "There are needs, which to certain natures are more
+intolerable than physical hunger.  To deprive a young girl of simple,
+innocent delights--companionship of her own kind, dainty clothes,
+harmless enjoyments--is like robbing a plant of sun and rain."
+
+"Do you mean to tell me that poverty need deprive any girl of such
+things?  Nonsense, Elizabeth!  I have seen girls who had but two
+dresses to their name, who worked and struggled and economized, and who
+nevertheless had as much pleasure--indeed more, I'll wager--than the
+most petted heiress in the land.  And what's more, they made better
+wives and better mothers and better citizens.  They knew how many cents
+make a dollar, and how many dollars their men could make in a week by
+the sweat of their brow, working not eight hours a day, but ten and
+twelve.  One never heard this sickly whine from them--this talk that
+women must be coddled and pampered, and that men can eat their hearts
+out to provide the 'sun' in which they bask like pet lizards!  They
+didn't ask for 'sunlight'--they asked only that they might work and
+save with their husbands--that they could be fit partners, and they
+found their joy, not in 'dainty clothes' and 'harmless enjoyments' but
+in giving their strength and their courage for their husbands and their
+children!"  Mr. Prescott had risen to his feet in the vehemence of his
+feeling, and was walking back and forth, his hands locked behind his
+back, and his head lowered and thrust forward between his hunched-up
+shoulders.
+
+"Good heavens, I've got him roused for fair," thought Miss Bancroft,
+with a mixture of amusement and dismay.  "And of course, theoretically
+he's dead right.  Now why is it that so many things which,
+theoretically, are dead right, practically, are all wrong?  That's what
+I've got to prove to him--and I don't know whether I shall succeed
+after all.  I must take care not to be sentimental--that rouses him
+dreadfully."
+
+Aloud she said, in a quiet voice:
+
+"Listen, Tom--under ordinary circumstances I should agree with you
+absolutely.  But a short time ago I spoke of want being relative.  You
+said that your nieces are not in want.  You meant, of course, that they
+had food and clothes and shelter.  If they were girls who lived in an
+absolutely different plane of life that would be sufficient for their
+happiness.  They could have pleasure with their two dresses and their
+one best bonnet, because everyone else of their class would have no
+more.  But take one of them out of that class; put her where her only
+companions would have to be sought for among men and women who lived on
+a scale of comparative wealth, where, to make friends, she would have
+to appear well, and so on--then, what in the first case was at least a
+sufficiency, now becomes tragically inadequate.  There is no cure but
+for that girl to recede from the class to which by birth, breeding and
+instinct she belongs.
+
+"You have built up a great fortune.  You yourself are what you boast of
+being--a self-made man--a man originally of the people.  But you made
+your nephew a gentleman--understand that I am using the word in the
+commonest sense.  Consequently his children belong to a class in which
+needs must be measured by a different scale from that used for working
+women.  They live--as you do, and most likely because you do--in a very
+rich community.  They suffer from wants that girls of a different class
+would never know.  They are deprived of things which your working girl
+would not be deprived of.  They are poorer on their two thousand a
+year, or whatever it is, than a peasant woman would be on two hundred,
+because their particular needs are more expensive."
+
+"They will be very rich--after I die," said Mr. Prescott in a low
+voice, after a short pause.  "But I won't let them even suspect it.
+That little wife of George's--I never want to see her again--she is a
+great little gambler.  If she felt sure that in a few years her
+daughters were coming into a fortune of several millions, Heaven only
+knows but that she'd have the last cent of it spent in advance.  You
+seem to have gleaned an immense amount of information concerning my
+nieces--perhaps you know what her plans for them are."
+
+"You know, Tom, that I was as much opposed--indeed more opposed,
+perhaps, than you were to George's marrying Lallie.  But that is
+neither here nor there now.  I am afraid that she is--well, attempting
+things for her girls that lie beyond her income.  You must not blame
+her.  She isn't a wise woman, but I am sure that she is one who suffers
+more for her mistakes than she causes others to suffer.  Of course I am
+no judge of that.
+
+"She is a little gambler, no doubt, as you said--but a gallant one.
+She is playing against rather desperate odds--and she cannot be blamed
+if she plays foolishly.  As I understand it, I believe that her object
+is to give her girls, by hook or crook, advantages that lie beyond her
+means, the goal being that one of them or both will marry--well.  If
+she wins--well and good----"
+
+"Well and good--fiddlesticks!  Nonsense!  Good Heavens!" shouted Mr.
+Prescott.  "Whatever are you driving at, Elizabeth?  I can't make head
+or tail of all this talking.  You come to me, telling me that my nieces
+are in want of some kind or other, that that mother of theirs is living
+beyond her means in her attempt to put them on a footing with the
+daughters of millionaires, so that they can marry some mother's son
+whom they fancy can stand their extravagance, and as far as I can make
+out, you want me to defray their expenses, so that the business of
+ruining some other man's boy as mine was ruined will be less difficult
+for them.  Have you gone clean daft?"
+
+"I see I haven't made myself perfectly clear," said Miss Bancroft,
+patiently.  "I should have told you that I saw both of your nieces last
+night.  It was because of the older one that I came here to-day--Nancy.
+She looks enough like George to make your heart ache.  And she is
+facing poor George's problem.  She is a very remarkable young girl--I
+don't cotton to the average young miss very readily, as you know, but
+there was something in that bright, eager young face that went to my
+heart.  She was at the Porterbridges'.  They came in an old hack that
+they were ashamed of.  Do you like to think of George's daughters doing
+that?
+
+"She is a girl who deserves a fair chance, and she's not getting it.
+But she isn't the sort that whimpers.  She struck me as being full of a
+fine courage--and an independence of spirit that made one member of the
+family the very troublesome person he is.  She is a girl who has her
+teeth set against circumstance, and her own cool, sober views of life.
+But she is very young--too young to have to cope with the difficulties
+that face her, and far too proud to accept any help with strings tied
+to it.  Remember that.  And in my opinion, it is a sin and a shame that
+you, who could give her the help she needs, and who could get a great
+deal of happiness in return--you won't even see her.  I'm not asking
+anything but that you see and talk to Nancy sometime."  Miss Bancroft
+rose, and shook out her skirt.
+
+Mr. Prescott stood, looking straight ahead of him, with his under lip
+thrust forward, a characteristic trick of that same grand-niece Nancy,
+if he but knew it.
+
+Presently he turned, and held out his hand with a queer, almost shy
+smile.
+
+"Do forgive me, Elizabeth, for bellowing at you as I have.  You know,
+my dear girl--and you have often agreed with me--that, while at my
+death my nieces will become very rich, it has been my purpose to allow
+them to know poverty, with all its sorrows and harassments, so that
+they can use my fortune wisely for their own happiness and for the
+happiness of the families that they will have in time.  My theory is
+right--but circumstances alter cases.  I shall think over what you have
+said--but I shall promise nothing."
+
+Miss Bancroft accepted his hand and pressed it affectionately.
+
+"Well, then, good-bye.  No, don't bother to open the door for me; I'll
+go this way."
+
+He smiled at her again as she went down the steps.
+
+"I always feel lonely when you have gone, even when we have been
+quarrelling," he remarked, with a wistful look.
+
+"Of course you feel lonely.  You roll around in that huge house of
+yours like a hazelnut in a shoe," returned Miss Bancroft, quickly.  He
+caught her meaning, and as quickly replied:
+
+"Nonsense--I like plenty of room.  Never could bear to have a lot of
+people hanging around.  No man can accomplish anything with an army of
+women and things hanging to his coat-tails!"
+
+"Tst!" observed Miss Bancroft, and because there was no answer to that,
+she could retire with the satisfaction of having had the last word.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+A MAN OF "PRINCIPLES"
+
+"One dozen stockings--six woolen and six silk--imagine owning six pairs
+of silk stockings---six nighties--don't they look luxurious, all
+beribboned and fluffy?  One thick sweater, one pair of stout boots--I
+hope these boots are stout enough; they look as if they could kick a
+hole through the side of a battle-ship.  One mackintosh--now where
+under the sun can I put this mackintosh?"
+
+"Oh, just roll it up in a bundle and slam it in that corner near your
+shoes.  It'll keep 'em from bumping around.  My dear, you look as if
+you'd been in a tornado."
+
+"_In_ a tornado!  I _am_ a tornado."  Nancy lifted a flushed face, and
+gazed at Alma through a haze of tumbled hair.  Then she sat back on her
+heels in front of the open trunk, and seizing her locks near the
+temples, pulled them frenziedly.  "Alma Prescott, if you sit there
+another moment looking calm, I'll throw this shoe-horn at you.  Do
+anything, scream, run around in circles, pant, anything, but _don't_
+look calm.  Every minute I'm forgetting something vital.  Let me see,
+nail-brush, tooth-brush, cold-cream----"
+
+"If you go over that formula again, I'll be a mopping, mowing idiot,"
+observed Alma serenely, from the window-seat.  "I wonder how one mops
+and mows--it sounds awfully idiotic, doesn't it?  I saw you put the
+nail-brush _and_ the tooth-brush _and_ the cold-cream in the tray
+there--left-hand corner.  Now, for goodness' sake, forget about
+them--it's just little things like that that unhinge the greatest
+minds.  You're horribly bad company while you're packing a trunk."
+
+"Well, anyhow, it's nearly done now--and yours is ready."
+
+"You're a lamb for doing mine for me--I haven't been a bit of help, I
+know.  Oh, you _know_ it's going to be glorious fun--at boarding
+school.  I've always longed to go to boarding school.  And it isn't
+awfully strict at Miss Leland's, Elise Porterbridge says.  They have
+midnight feasts, and all sorts of things--and then, you know, Frank
+Barrows is at Harvard, and he asked me up there for some dance near
+Christmas.  Don't you think Frank is very nice, Nancy?"  This was what
+Alma had been leading around to, and Nancy knew it.  Personally she
+thought Frank rather an affected youth, but she had sense enough not to
+air this opinion before Alma just then.
+
+"Why, yes, he seems very nice," she replied, with very mild interest.
+
+"I think he has sort of more to him than most men of his age," pursued
+Alma, affecting a judicial air.
+
+"Probably he has."
+
+"He dances beautifully.  Goodness, I had a wonderful time the other
+night.  I know that you probably think it's wrong of me, but I'd like
+nothing more than to go to a party like that every night in the week."
+
+"_I_ don't think it's wrong at all--only I think you'd probably get
+awfully sick of it in a little while.  And--and the chief trouble as
+far as we are concerned is that it's so dreadfully expensive.  I know
+you think I'm always harping on the same string--but do you remember
+the motto of Mr. Micawber--'Income one pound--expenditure nineteen
+shillings and sixpence--product, happiness; income one pound,
+expenditure one pound and sixpence, product, misery----'"
+
+"Well, I know that's very sensible, but there's lots of sense to 'eat,
+drink, and be merry, for to-morrow we die,'" returned Alma, with a gay
+laugh.  "You're thinking about my dress and slippers--I could have
+killed that person who spilt their fruit punch all over my skirt, but
+there was nothing to do about it, and besides I'm sure I can hide the
+stain with a sash or something.  I don't believe in worrying."  With
+this, Madame Optimist turned and, pressing her short nose against the
+window pane, drummed with her little pink nails against the wet glass.
+The rain was falling again in a monotonous drenching downpour,
+stripping the trees of the few, brown, shivering leaves that clung to
+the dripping branches.  The promise of Indian summer seemed to have
+been definitely broken for reasons of Dame Nature's own, and the
+weather was having a tantrum about it.  But inside, the little bedroom
+was all the cosier in contrast to the woebegone gloom of the early
+dusk.  The chintz window curtains of Nancy's making were faded by many
+washings, it is true, and the two white iron bedsteads might have
+looked sprucer for a coat of paint, but with a fire glowing in the
+grate, and sending out an almost affectionate glint upon all the
+familiar objects, the little room had an air of motherly cheerfulness
+and comfort.  A shabby but inviting armchair stood in front of the
+hearth.  In a corner, a white bookcase harbored a family of well-worn
+volumes, ranging from "Grimm's Fairy Tales," and "Stepping Stones to
+English Literature" to "The Three Musketeers" and "Jane Eyre," all
+tattered and thumbed, and seeming to wear the happy, weary expression
+of a rag doll that has been "loved to death."
+
+"Well," Nancy was saying, in reply to Alma's observation, "I don't
+believe in worrying, but I do believe in having an umbrella if you live
+in a rainy climate.  Then you don't have to worry about the--rain.
+_Comprenez-vous_?"
+
+"I comprenez--you are talking in symbols, aren't you?  Where's Mother?"
+
+"Here I am, darling," replied Mrs. Prescott from the doorway.  "Dear
+me, the trunks are all packed, aren't they?  Nancy, what a wonderful
+child you are.  Oh, whatever am I going to do without my daughters!"
+
+"This time to-morrow night we'll all be dying of the blues.  Thank
+goodness, here's Hannah with some tea--I'm starving," said Nancy,
+springing up to take the tray from the hands of the fat old woman, who
+had just made her appearance, her full, solemn red face looming behind
+the teapot.
+
+They all gathered around the fire, Nancy and Alma settling cross-legged
+on the floor, and immediately opening a disastrous attack on the plate
+of chocolate cake--Hannah's prize contribution to this farewell feast.
+
+"This time to-morrow night we'll probably be regaling ourselves on
+baked beans and cold rice-pudding," added Alma, cramming chocolate cake
+into her mouth like a greedy child.  "That's an awful thought."
+
+"Now, miss, ye don't suppose they'll be feedin' ye bad," exclaimed
+Hannah in great concern.  The old woman had taken her stand
+respectfully near the doorway, loath to lose the last few glimpses of
+her adored young mistresses.  "If ye think that now, I can send ye a
+box of jellies and the like any time ye say."
+
+"Well, they'll probably give us something more than bread and
+water--but not much," replied Nancy, seriously.  "They don't believe in
+giving students much to eat, because it hampers their brains."
+
+"Is that so, now?" marvelled Hannah.
+
+"It is indeed--it's a scientific fact, Hannah.  When we come back for
+the Christmas holidays, we'll probably be so pale and wan that we won't
+even cast a shadow.  But goodness, how clever we'll be."
+
+"I'm a great believer in good feedin'," commented Hannah dubiously.
+"And I don't cotton much to scientifics, if you'll pardon me, miss.
+Lord, what an empty house 'twill be without ye."
+
+"I hope you aren't insinuating that we take up much room," laughed
+Nancy; she was teasing Hannah to cover up her own growing sensation of
+homesickness and uneasiness.  "Take good care of Mother, Hannah, and
+don't let her go out without her rubbers on, and--and make her write to
+us every single day.  It's ridiculous, I suppose, to talk as if we were
+going twelve hundred instead of twelve miles, but we've never been even
+twelve miles away from home before."
+
+"Yes, and there's nothing like seeing something of the world to broaden
+a person," observed Alma, sagely.  "When I'm grown up, I shall
+certainly travel.  I intend to make a tour of the world.  Egypt
+especially--goodness, I'd like to go to Egypt.  That Edith Palliser was
+a lucky girl--her guardian took her to Paris and Rome and Cairo and
+even to Algiers, and she met all kinds of interesting people--a Spanish
+prince and a Russian count, and loads of artists and writers and
+things.  I'm afraid that we must be terribly provincial."
+
+"Ah, now, don't say that," remonstrated Hannah, who had no idea what
+"provincial" meant, and was consequently convinced that it must mean
+something very bad indeed.  "Bless my soul!  There's the bell--now who
+could be comin' here on a day like this?"
+
+The door-bell had indeed been rung fiercely, and a second ring followed
+impatiently upon the first.  Hannah vanished.
+
+"Who in the world----" wondered Nancy.
+
+"Sh!  It's some man."
+
+Alma sprang up, and running out into the hall leaned curiously over the
+bannister.  In a moment she returned, looking as if she had seen a
+ghost, her mouth open, and her eyes popping.
+
+"Nancy!  Mother!  I think it's _Uncle Thomas_!"
+
+"Nonsense!"  But Nancy too scrambled to her feet and stood listening
+with suspended breath.  "Mother----!"
+
+"No, my dear--it--it _couldn't_ be!"  Mrs. Prescott had turned quite
+pale.  "It must be just some tradesman.  See--there's Hannah now."
+
+But Hannah's face confirmed the dazing suspicion.  Without even
+announcing the stupifying news, she leaned weakly against the doorway,
+and pressed her hand to her ample bosom, signifying an overwhelming
+agitation.
+
+"Who is it, Hannah?"
+
+"The saints protect us, miss--ma'am!  Sure, it's the old gentleman
+himself--as large as life, indeed.  'Is the missis home?' says he, and
+before I can draw breath--'Tell her Mr. Prescott is waitin' on her, and
+would like to see the young ladies,' says he.  And he sticks his
+soakin' umbrella in the corner, and without takin' off his overshoes,
+stalks into the livin'-room.  'Humph!' says he, seein' the hole in the
+carpet, 'that's dangerous.  I like to have broken me neck.  Be good
+enough to hurry, ma'am,' says he, 'an' don't stand gawpin' at me like a
+simpleton.'  'Will ye have a seat, sir?' says I.  'I will, when I want
+one,' says he, short-like, and there he stands standin' and starin'
+around him, and suckin' at his lips, and kinda talkin' to hisself.
+What shall I be tellin' him, ma'am?"
+
+This bomb seemed to have paralyzed the little family.
+
+"I--I--tell him----" stammered Mrs. Prescott, looking piteously at
+Nancy for help.
+
+"You'd better go right down, Mother.  Why, you look frightened to
+death, dear."
+
+"I am.  He frightens me dreadfully.  I can't bear sarcastic people.  Do
+go down alone, Nancy,--tell him I have a headache."
+
+"No, no!  That wouldn't be wise.  What can he say?  He may want to be
+very nice," said Nancy, reassuringly.  "Come along--don't keep him
+waiting.  Here, just tuck up your hair a bit.  Come on, Alma."
+
+Inwardly quaking, but outwardly preserving a dignified composure, the
+three descended the staircase, with the calmness of people going to
+some inevitable fate.
+
+"He can't bite you, dear," whispered Nancy to her mother, with a
+nervous little giggle.
+
+Mr. Prescott was standing perfectly still, with his back toward the
+door, staring with an evidently absorbed interest at the wall in front
+of him.  He turned slowly, as Mrs. Prescott entered the room, and for a
+moment surveyed her and the two girls without speaking.  Then he said,
+casually:
+
+"Good-afternoon, Lallie."
+
+Alma shot a glance at Nancy.
+
+"Good-afternoon, Uncle Thomas," said Mrs. Prescott, in a rather faint
+voice, and flushing crimson with nervousness.  "It--it is very kind of
+you----"
+
+"Not at all," he interrupted, brusquely, "not at all.  May we have a
+light--it is rather dark."
+
+Nancy quickly lit the gas, and as the light from the jet shone down on
+her upturned face the old man scrutinized her keenly.  A queer,
+half-tender, but repressed expression changed the lines in his stern
+old face for a moment, then he looked at Alma, who was regarding him
+with perfectly unconcealed terror and awe.
+
+"How do you do?" he said to her, holding out his hand.  "How do you do?
+You're my niece Alma, eh?  Anne is the one who looks like--like my
+nephew, and Alma is the one who resembles her mother."  He said this as
+if he were repeating some directions to himself.  "I haven't seen you
+since you were children."  He shook Alma's hand formally, and sat down
+at Mrs. Prescott's timid invitation, The short silence which ensued,
+while it seemed like an age of discomfort to the Prescotts, apparently
+was unobserved by him.
+
+"It has been a very long time since--since I have seen you, Uncle
+Thomas," said Mrs. Prescott in desperation, quite aware that this
+remark, like any one she should make just then, was a very awkward one.
+
+"Yes.  I never go out, madam.  So this is Anne--Nancy, eh?"  He turned
+abruptly to the girl and met her clear, steady eyes sharply.  "You were
+a child--a very little girl when I saw you last.  You resemble my
+nephew very much,--my--my dear.
+
+"No doubt, madam, you are wondering at the reason of this visit," he
+said, all at once plunging into the heart of matters with an air of
+impatience at any "beating about the bush."  "I've no doubt it was the
+last thing in the world you expected, eh?"
+
+"It was indeed a surprise," murmured Mrs. Prescott.
+
+"I realized that my grandnieces are growing up, and I had a curiosity
+to see them.  There is the kernel of the matter.  They are handsome
+girls.  I suppose everyone knows that they have a rich uncle--and
+prospects, eh?"
+
+"Neither my daughters nor anyone else has been deluded in that
+respect," answered Mrs. Prescott, with a touch of spirit.
+
+"Hum.  Well, that's good, I should say.  Nothing puts anyone in such a
+false position as to be generally regarded as having--prospects.  It's
+ruinous, especially for girls."
+
+"My daughters have been taught that they must rely entirely on
+themselves.  You need not have come to repeat the lesson to them, Uncle
+Thomas," returned Mrs. Prescott, trying to conceal her temper.  Mr.
+Prescott affected not to notice her rising annoyance, which was a
+natural enough reaction from her earlier nervousness.  Instead he next
+addressed himself directly to Alma.
+
+"So you think I'm a regular old ogre, don't you, my dear?"  His eyes
+suddenly twinkled at her palpable terror and distress, but only Nancy
+caught the twinkle.  "You think I'm a queer, crotchety old fellow, eh?
+Well, don't let's talk about me.  I want to know what you are planning
+to do with yourselves--an old man's curiosity.  Your face is your
+fortune, my dear--though a pretty face is not infrequently a
+misfortune, so the wiseacres say.  I understand that you two young
+ladies are going now to a fashionable school,--to learn how to be
+fashionable, no doubt.  That's a folly--it would be better if you
+stayed at home and learned how to cook and darn."
+
+"We _can_ cook and darn," said Nancy, demurely.
+
+"So?  Good.  Now tell me why are you going to this school?  It's no
+place for poor girls.  I suppose it's some woman's notion of yours,
+ma'am?" pursued the old gentleman, turning to Mrs. Prescott.
+
+"My plans for my daughters can concern you so little, Uncle Thomas----"
+began Mrs. Prescott, throwing her usual diplomacy to the winds.
+
+"That it behooves me to mind my own business, eh?"  Mr. Prescott
+finished for her with perfect good-humor.  "You are quite right,
+madam."  He seemed really pleased at Mrs. Prescott's spirit, and went
+on, "You do right to tell me so.  I have acted in a most unkinsmanly
+way toward my nieces, and consequently it's none of my business what
+they do or what they don't do.  Well, if you had allowed me to
+interfere in this matter, I should have imagined that you were doing so
+simply because you wanted to get into my good graces, and so forth,
+which would have been quite useless in as far as it would have changed
+my plans in regard to them.  It's a very silly thing you are doing with
+them, in my opinion, but I'm glad you have spirit enough to stick to
+your own mind.  Now, my dear, don't be angry with me.  Understand that
+I have come to interfere in your plans in no way at all.  It's not my
+purpose to use your poverty and your need for my money as a force by
+which to tyrannize over you.  I had these thoughts in mind when I came
+here to-day--on an old man's whimsical impulse: I wished, first of all,
+to put a period to the unfriendliness that has existed between us all
+these years; I wished to see my nieces, and I wished, at the same
+time--and in order to avoid any false attitude on your part or on my
+own--to have it clearly understood that you must not expect any
+financial assistance from me.  Live out your own lives--think out your
+own problems--make your mistakes, fearlessly--do not, I beg you,
+humiliate yourselves by trying to conciliate an old man, who chooses to
+do what he will with the money he made with his own wits and labor.
+There, that is particularly what I wanted to say to you.  Don't try to
+'work' me.  Don't expect anything from me.  Thus, if we are friends, it
+will be a disinterested friendship.  Otherwise, if I felt that we were
+on good terms, I should be thinking to myself--'It is only because I am
+the rich uncle.'  If you were amiable with me, I'd think, 'That's
+because they are afraid of angering me.'  Now--let us be friends.  I
+think I can be very fond of my nieces--but don't expect anything from
+me.  Is that clear?  Will you make friends with an old man on those
+terms?"  He looked first into Mrs. Prescott's eyes, and saw that she
+was still hostile; at Alma, and read her bewilderment in her face, and
+then at Nancy.  Again his eyes softened, almost touchingly, and with
+quick instinct she understood the appeal that lay beneath his brusque
+language.  She remembered her father's stories of his tenderness, and
+somehow she understood that what the old man longed for was the simple
+affection of which for so long his life had been empty.  And she
+understood, too, his dread of gaining that affection by holding out
+hopes of payment for it.  His reiterated "Don't expect anything of me,"
+was more of a plea than a curt warning.  He wanted their good-will for
+himself, and not for his money--that was what he was trying to say in
+his brusque, almost crude, way.  Her eyes were bright with this
+understanding of his heart, and she held out her hand with a smile; for
+he seemed to have turned directly to her for his answer.  He grasped
+her hand eagerly.
+
+"There!" he exclaimed, with an almost child-like pleasure.  "There is
+George's daughter, every inch.  We understand each other, eh?  Good
+girl.  We shall be friends, eh?  I'm a friend--not a rich old uncle,
+who'll give you what you want, if you manage him right.  That's it, you
+understand?  Now, this is pleasant--this is honest.  Be independent, my
+dear.  Don't expect anything of me.  I tell you--if I thought that it
+was only thoughts of my money that bought your good-will, I'd give the
+last cent of it away to-morrow."
+
+He got up, evidently well satisfied, and still retaining Nancy's hand
+in his.  The other he held out to Mrs. Prescott, who took it, with a
+constrained smile; and then, in high good-humor he pinched Alma's
+dimpled chin playfully.
+
+"Good-day!  Good-day!  I'm glad I came.  We'll know each other better
+after a while.  We understand each other, eh?  The hatchet is buried,
+eh?  Good.  It's a piece of business I've been putting off for a long
+while.  Tut-tut!  Where's my umbrella?"
+
+The three Prescotts stood at the window, staring with varying feelings
+at the stooped, but surprisingly agile old figure that walked off
+through the rain and fog, head down, the worn velvet collar of his old
+coat hunched around his neck--and with never a look behind.  Then, all
+at once, both Alma and Nancy broke out laughing.
+
+"You seemed to get along with him beautifully," chuckled Alma.
+"Goodness, he scared me out of my five wits--so that I couldn't
+understand a word he was saying.  I couldn't tell you for the life of
+me what he was talking about.  I think he must be crazy.  But he
+doesn't seem so bad at all.  At times he even looked rather nice."
+
+"Why, I believe he _is_ nice," said Nancy.  "He's a funny, eccentric
+old man, but I'm sure that he'd be rather a dear, if he doesn't think
+that we are trying to 'manage' him as he says."
+
+Mrs. Prescott was silent, her pretty face frowning a little.  Nancy
+looked at her a moment, and then putting her arms around her, rubbed
+her own ruddy cheek against her mother's pink one.
+
+"Put yourself in his place, Mother," she said gently.  "He's very
+lonely--he wants to be friendly--he was thinking of Father all the
+time, you know.  But he has a horror of our being affectionate with him
+just for the sake of his money.  Imagine what it would be to be a
+lonely old man, always troubled by the thought that the only reason
+people would be nice to him was because they were hoping to profit by
+it."
+
+"He made it very clear that he has no intention of--of helping us in
+that way," said Mrs. Prescott.
+
+"And I'm glad of it.  I'm glad of it!" cried Nancy.  "I don't want to
+act and think and live to conciliate a rich relative.  I think that
+must be the most hateful position in the world.  I want to forget that
+Uncle Thomas is very rich and very old--just as he wants us to forget
+it.  I want to make my own life, and have no one to thank or to blame
+for whatever I accomplish but myself."
+
+"What an independent lassie!  You are right, dear," said Mrs. Prescott,
+touching the little curls around Nancy's flushed face affectionately.
+"You are right.  You are like a boy, aren't you?  I was never that way
+myself--and that was the trouble.  You have such good sense, my dear.
+Whatever am I going to do without you?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE FIRST NIGHT AT SCHOOL
+
+Miss Leland's school wore that sober title with a somewhat frivolous
+air.  It seemed to be saying, "Oh, call me a school if you want to--but
+don't take me seriously."  It was like a pretty girl, who puts on a
+pair of bone-rimmed spectacles in fun and assumes a studious
+expression, while the dimples lurk in her cheeks.
+
+It was a low, rambling, white building, with a stately colonial
+portico, and broad porches at each wing.  In front, an immaculate lawn
+swept to the trim hedges that bordered the road; in the back, this lawn
+sloped downward to a grove of trees, which were now almost bare.  Under
+them stood several picturesque stone benches, while just beyond lay a
+wide, terrace-garden with a sun-dial in the centre.  Altogether, it
+resembled a pleasant country place, dedicated to merriment and good
+cheer.
+
+Through the dusk of a rather bleak autumn night, its friendly lights
+shone out comfortably as the two Prescotts jogged up to the door in the
+station wagon.
+
+The trip up from the Broadmore Station had not, however, been a lively
+one, despite the fact that two other girls besides the Prescotts had
+taken the hack with them; the first spasm of homesickness having
+evidently seized them all simultaneously.  One of the girls, a little,
+sallow-faced creature, sat like a mouse in her corner, and by
+occasional dismal sniffles, gave notice that she was weeping and did
+not want to be disturbed.  The other, a plump miss with scarlet cheeks
+and perfectly round eyes, had bravely essayed a conversation.
+
+"Are you going to Miss Leland's?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Is this your first year?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"What's your names?"
+
+The Prescotts gave her the information, and she told them in exchange
+that her name was Maizie Forrest, that she was from Pittsburgh, that
+she had a brother at Yale, and another at Pomfret, and that she thought
+it no end of fun that they, the Prescotts, were going to Miss Leland's.
+After this flow of confidence, conversation languished and expired in
+the silence of dismal thoughts.
+
+The hack drove up to the door, and deposited the four girls on the
+steps.  Then they entered the hall, from which was issuing a perfect
+babel of feminine squeaks and chattering.
+
+As Nancy and Alma stood together, frankly clinging hand to hand, a
+husky damsel rushed past them and precipitated herself on the neck and
+shoulders of the conversational Maizie.
+
+"Maizie, darling!"
+
+"Jane, dearest!  When did you get here?"
+
+"Been here hours.  My dear, we're going to room together!  Isn't that
+scrumptious?"
+
+"Perfectly divine.  Where's Alice?"
+
+"Hasn't come yet.  Come on, let's go see M'amzelle."
+
+The small, weepy girl stood still gazing mournfully at the rapturous
+meetings about her.
+
+Nancy looked at her sympathetically, but she felt much too blue and
+strange herself to try to urge anyone else to be cheerful.
+
+"I don't know where we go, or what we're supposed to do, do you?" she
+whispered to Alma.
+
+"No.  I hope to goodness it's near supper time.  There, I think that's
+Miss Leland."
+
+A tall, very thin, very erect lady, wearing nose-glasses attached to a
+long gold chain, and with sparkling, fluffy white hair that made her
+face look quite brown in contrast, was descending the stairs.  Several
+of the girls rushed to her, and she kissed them peckishly.  Evidently
+they were old pupils.  Nancy and Alma heard her asking them about their
+dear mothers and their charming fathers, and where they had been during
+the summer, and if (playfully) they were going to work very, very hard.
+And the girls were saying:
+
+"_Dear_ Miss Leland, it's so _nice_ to be back again!"
+
+Nancy and Alma approached her a little uncertainly.  The other girls
+drew back and frankly stared at them.  "New girls," they heard
+whispered, and for some reason the appellation made them both feel
+terribly "out of it."
+
+"Miss Leland," began Nancy, coloring, "I--I'm Anne Prescott--I--this is
+my sister Alma--I--er----"
+
+"Why, yes.  I'm so glad you got here safely," said Miss Leland, quite
+cordially, taking Nancy's hand and Alma's at the same time.  "Of course
+you want to know where your room is.  You two are going to room
+together to-night, anyway.  Later you will probably have different
+roommates.  Now, let me see--Mildred, this is Anne Prescott, and this
+is Alma.  They are new girls, so I'm going to count on you to help them
+find themselves a little.  They are going to be next door to you
+to-night, so will you take them up-stairs?"
+
+A very handsome, very haughty-looking girl, with gray eyes and a Roman
+nose, shook hands with them briefly.  The sisters followed her in a
+subdued silence.  She was the sort of girl plainly destined to become
+one of the most frigid and formidable of dowagers; it was impossible to
+look at her profile, her fur coat, or to meet her cold, critical glance
+without immediately picturing her with a lorgnon, crisply marcelled
+gray hair, and the wintry smile with which the typical, unapproachable
+matron can freeze out the slightest attempt at an unwelcome
+friendliness on the part of an inconsequential person.  Her last name
+was weighty with importance, since she was the daughter of Marshall
+Lloyd, the well-known railroad magnate.
+
+"I shan't like _her_," Nancy remarked to Alma, when this young lady had
+indicated their room to them, and left them with a curt announcement
+that they should go down-stairs in fifteen minutes.
+
+"She is sort of snob-looking," agreed Alma, throwing her hat on her
+narrow white bed.  "But there's no sense in being prejudiced against a
+person right away.  Goodness, this room is chilly.  I wish we knew
+somebody here.  I hate being a new girl.  Everyone else sounds as if
+they are having such a good time.  I feel dreadfully out of it, don't
+you?  And all the girls look at you as if they were wondering who in
+the world you are."
+
+"Well, it's only natural that we feel that way now," said Nancy, trying
+to sound cheerful.  "Come on, we've got to hurry."
+
+From the line of rooms along the corridor issued the unceasing chatter
+of gay voices; there was a continual scampering back and forth, bursts
+of tumultuous greetings, giggles, shrieks.  Alma, comb in hand, stood
+at the doorway, listening with a wistful droop to her lips.  Two doors
+down, four girls were perched up on a trunk, kicking it with their
+patent-leather heels, and gabbling like magpies.  In the room opposite,
+five girls, curled up on the two beds, were gossiping blithely, while a
+sixth, a pretty, red-haired girl, was gaily unpacking her trunk,
+flinging her lingerie with great skill across the room into the open
+drawers of the bureau, which caught stockings and petticoats very much
+as a dog will catch a bone in his mouth.  They were all having such a
+good time--and they all seemed to have a lengthy history of gay
+summer's doings to relate.  Each one jabbered away, apparently
+perfectly regardless of what the others were saying.
+
+"Oh, my dear, I _did_ have the most marvellous time----"
+
+"Dick told me----"
+
+"Are you going to come out next winter----"
+
+"Margie's wedding was perfectly gorgeous--and _I_ caught the
+bouquet----"
+
+"Tom is coming down for the midwinter dance----"
+
+"Who _is_ that frump who's rooming with Sara----"
+
+"Dozens of new girls.  Hope some of 'em are human, anyway----"
+
+"Come on, Alma.  Hurry!  You haven't even washed yet," said Nancy,
+impatiently.  "We've got to go down-stairs----"
+
+"Yes, and stand around gaping like ninnies," added Alma, morosely,
+coming back to the mirror, and beginning to brush out her thick, yellow
+hair.
+
+"It'll be ever so much nicer when we come back here after the Christmas
+holidays," said Nancy, busily polishing her nails, to hide the mist
+that would creep over her eyes.  "To-morrow we can fix up this room a
+bit--if we can put up some chintz curtains, and get a few books and
+cushions around, it'll be as good as home, almost."
+
+"But--but Mother won't be here, and neither will Hannah--boo-hoo!"  And
+here Alma quite suddenly burst out crying, wrinkling up her pretty face
+like a child of two.  With the tears dripping off her chin, she
+continued to brush her hair vigorously, sobbing and sniffling
+pathetically.  Nancy looked up, and, unable any longer to control her
+own tears, while at the same time she was almost hysterically amused by
+Alma's ridiculously droll expression of grief, began to sob and giggle
+alternately.  Alma, still clutching the brush, promptly threw herself
+into Nancy's arms, and there they sat, clinging together, and frankly
+wailing like a pair of lost children, in full view of the corridor.
+
+"I--I want to--g-go h-home----" sniffled Alma.
+
+"I--I don't like that girl with th-the n-nose----" wailed Nancy.  "D-Do
+f-fix your hair, Alma.  I-If you're l-late for d-dinner w-we'll be
+expelled.  Here----" she tried to twist up Alma's unruly mane, hardly
+realizing what she _was_ trying to do, while Alma tenderly mopped
+Nancy's wet cheeks with her own little, soaking handkerchief.
+
+"I--I say!  You two aren't _howling_, are you?" inquired a drawling,
+utterly amazed voice from the doorway.  The two girls looked up, their
+hostile expressions plainly asking whose business it was if they _were_
+howling--but promptly their hostility vanished.
+
+A very tall, astonishingly lank girl was standing in the doorway, feet
+apart, and hands clasped behind her back, regarding them amiably
+through a pair of enormous, bone-rimmed goggles.  Every now and again,
+she would blink her eyes, and screw up her face comically, while she
+continued to smile, showing a set of teeth as large and white as
+pebbles.
+
+"You were saying something about being expelled.  Are you expelled
+already?  _Ex plus pello, pellere pulsi pulsum_--meaning to push out,
+or, as we say in the vernacular, to kick out, fire, bounce.  Miss
+Drinkwater likes us to note the Latin derivations of all our English
+words, and I've got the habit.  You two seem to be lachrymosus, or
+blue--by which I take it that you are new girls.  I sympathize with
+you, although I am an ancient.  Two years ago this very night, I wept
+so hard that I nearly gave my roommate pneumonia from the dampness.
+How-do-you-do?"  With this unconventional preliminary, accompanied by
+one of the friendliest and most disarming grins imaginable, the
+newcomer marched over to the bed and shook hands vigorously.
+
+"My name is Charlotte Lucretia Adela Spencer.  Really it is.  You must
+take my word for it.  But I only use the 'Charlotte.'  The others I
+keep in case of emergency.  I room next door, with Mildred Lloyd--who,
+incidentally, is a perfect lady, while _I_ am not.  I was born in the
+year 1903, in the city of Denver, Colorado--but of that, more anon.
+It's tremendously interesting, but if _you_--is your name Alma?--if you
+don't get your coiffure coifed, you'll miss out on our evening repast.
+Wiggle, my dear, wiggle!"
+
+Thus urged, Alma "wiggled" accordingly; and while she carefully washed
+her tear-stained face, and put up her hair, their visitor, sprawling
+across the bed, kept up a running fire of ridiculous remarks, all
+uttered in her peculiar, dry, drawling voice, and punctuated with the
+oddest facial contortions.  Yet, in spite of her nonsense, there was
+very evidently a good deal of real sense, and the kindest feeling
+behind it, and her singular face, too unusual to be called either plain
+or pretty, beamed with satisfaction when she had won a genuine peal of
+laughter from the two dejected Prescotts.
+
+"We'd better go down now.  To-night of course everything is more or
+less topsy-turvy.  My trunk, I think, must be still out in Kokomo,
+Indiana, or some such place.  I don't even expect to see it for another
+month or so.  But _I_ don't mind.  I'm a regular child of nature
+anyway--it's just Amelia who's pernickety about our appearing in full
+regalia every night for dinner.  Amelia is Leland, of course.  She's
+tremendously keen on preserving a refining influence about the school,
+and I think she looks on me as a rather demoralizing factor.  There
+goes the gong."
+
+The three went down-stairs together, Charlotte linking herself between
+Nancy and Alma.
+
+As if by magic, the din of a few moments before had been lulled.  The
+fifty or sixty girls had gathered in the large reception room, where a
+wood-fire was blazing up a huge stone chimney, and where Miss Leland,
+wearing a dignified black evening dress, was seated in a pontifical
+chair, chatting with eight or ten of her charges, with the air of a
+gracious hostess.  All the voices had sunk to a lower key.
+
+"Is everyone here?"  She looked about her, and closing the book she had
+been toying with led the way into the dining-room beyond, where the ten
+or twelve small tables, with their snowy covers, and softly shaded
+candles gave the room more the appearance of a quiet restaurant than
+the ordinary school refectory.
+
+Charlotte Spencer sat with Nancy at a table near Miss Leland's; while
+Alma found herself separated from her sister, and relegated to another
+table where she was completely marooned among five strange girls.
+
+Charlotte introduced Nancy to a sallow maiden with prominent front
+teeth, named Allison Maitland, to a statuesque brunette named Katherine
+Leonard----
+
+"The school beauty," was her brief comment.  "And this is Denise Lloyd,
+sister of Mildred, my roommate.  Hope we have soup."
+
+"Are you any relation to Lawrence Prescott, who goes to Williams?"
+asked the beautiful Katherine, turning to Nancy with a slightly
+patronizing air.  Nancy vaguely disclaimed a kinship that might have
+won her Miss Leonard's interest, and thereby quickly lost some of it.
+
+"No, she's not, she says," said Charlotte.  "Is he a beau of yours?
+'Yes,' replied the girl, a soft blush mantling her damask cheek.
+'Naturally he's a beau of mine.  Who isn't?' and with this keen retort,
+she again lost herself in her maiden meditations.  But I'll tell you
+who she is a relation of--she's the thirty-second cousin once removed
+of 'Prescott's Conquest of Peru'--aren't you, Nancy?"
+
+"Charlotte, you're a scream," said Katherine, with an affected laugh,
+and turning to Nancy, she went on, speaking in a mincing voice, and
+always placing her lips as if she were continually guarding against
+spoiling the symmetry of their perfect cupid's bow.  "You know, we
+always expect Charlotte to say funny things."
+
+"I'm the school buffoon, in other words," commented Charlotte,
+dryly--evidently not much liking to be marked as a professional
+humorist.  "I'm supposed to be '_so_ amusin', doncherknow'--and
+consequently, everyone is expected to haw-haw whenever I open my mouth.
+But if you listen carefully, you'll be surprised to hear that at times
+I talk sense.  Now, Allison here is the school genius.  You'd never
+suspect it, but she is.  I wish to goodness that new waitress would
+bring me some more bread.  It isn't considered stylish around here to
+have the bread on the table, but I do wish they'd consider my appetite."
+
+"Is that perfectly sweet-looking girl over there your sister?" asked
+Katherine, indicating Alma, her slightly patronizing air still more
+pronounced.
+
+"Your new rival for the golden apple, Kate," remarked Charlotte, with a
+grin.  "And a blonde, too."
+
+Katherine flushed, and tried to laugh off her annoyance at Charlotte's
+impish teasing.
+
+"I think she's perfectly lovely."
+
+"Oh, handsome is as handsome does, so they say.  The question is has
+she a beautiful soul.  Now, my soul is something wonderful--if it would
+only show through a bit," murmured Charlotte.  "I'm plain, but good, as
+they say of calico.  There's a rumor to the effect that Cleopatra was
+very ugly; hope it's so.  There are two alternatives for an ugly
+woman--either to be tremendously good and noble, or to be very, very
+wicked--I can't make up my mind which career to choose.  It's an awful
+problem."
+
+"I'm going to take muthick lethons thith year, Tharlotte--with Mithter
+Conthtantini," lisped Denise Lloyd.  "Don't you think he'th jutht
+wonderful?"  Denise did not resemble her sister in the least.  She was
+a plump, roly-poly girl of sixteen, still at the giggly, gushing stage
+of her life--but much more likable than the haughty Mildred.
+
+She turned to Nancy, with the polite desire of including the new girl
+in the conversation, and went on with a blush, "Mithter Conthtantini is
+jutht _wonderful_.  Are you going to take muthick lethons?  You'd jutht
+_love_ him!  And bethides, if you take muthick, you can drop thience."
+
+"I don't think I could get very far with the piano in one year," said
+Nancy with a smile.
+
+"Oh, he doethn't teach piano.  He teacheth violin."
+
+"And of course, the violin is so much simpler," remarked Charlotte.
+"Mr. Constantini has a rolling black eye, and an artistic
+temperament--inclined to have fits, _I_ think----"
+
+"Fitth, Tharlotte!" cried Denise, in bitter reproach.  "Why, he'th
+jutht _lovely_!  He doethn't have fitth at _all_!"
+
+"Well, it sounds as if _somebody_ were having fits, to hear all the
+awful squeaks and groans that come out of the music room, while one of
+our rising Paganinis is having her lesson.  I always imagined that it
+was poor Mr. Constantini," replied Charlotte, mildly.  "Anyway, the
+point is, that Constantini is a beautiful creature, and consequently a
+year of violin is considered infinitely more improving than a year of
+science.  Personally, I think that the study of the violin ought to be
+forbidden under penalty of the law, except in cases of the most acute
+genius.  I think that the playing of one wrong note on the violin ought
+to be punishable by a heavy fine, and playing two, by imprisonment for
+life, or longer.  There are times when I feel that hanging is far too
+good for Dolly Parker.  She ought to be boiled in oil, until tender----"
+
+Nancy laughed.
+
+"So you take the year of science?  That's where I belong, too, I
+suppose."
+
+"Tharlotte plays the piano jutht beautifully," said Denise.  "She
+compotheth----"
+
+"My brother calls it decomposition," said Charlotte, reddening, as she
+always did when any of her talents were lauded, and trying to turn it
+off with a joke.
+
+Miss Leland rose, and the room became silent, since she appeared to be
+about to make an announcement.
+
+"To-night, girls, there is, of course, no study-hour, and special
+privileges are extended to you all," she said, in her clear,
+well-trained voice.  "You have an hour for recreation after dinner, and
+I hope that all the old girls will make a point of helping our new
+girls to forget that they are not at home.  Prayers will be at nine, as
+usual, and you will not be required to be in your rooms before
+nine-forty-five.  No doubt you all have a great deal to talk about, so
+I am going to be lenient with you to-night.  To-morrow, the regular
+school regime will be resumed."
+
+"Hooray!  Nancy, you and Alma are herewith cordially invited to my room
+to a negligee party at nine-twenty sharp.  I had the good sense to
+bring a few delicacies with me, leaving my trunk to the tender mercies
+of the express company."  Charlotte rose, and taking Nancy's arm, filed
+out of the dining-room with the other girls, behind Miss Leland.  But
+in the living-room, a small band of girls fell upon Charlotte.
+
+"Come along, old dear.  Some dance-music now.  Come on."  And they bore
+her off to the piano, deposited her almost bodily upon the bench, and
+opened the keyboard.  Three others rolled back the rugs from the
+polished floor, and in a moment a dozen couples were spinning around as
+gaily as if they were at a ball.
+
+Nancy, a prey to her usual shyness in the midst of strangers, clung
+close to the piano, where Charlotte, without pausing in her
+astonishingly clever playing, reached up, and drew her down on the
+piano bench, from where she could watch Alma.
+
+Alma's prettiness and natural gaiety was having its usual success.  The
+younger girls crowded around her, the older girls petted her.  Even the
+frigid Mildred made her dance with her.  Her cheeks were flushed, her
+eyes bright again.  By some indescribable charm she had walked into
+instant popularity.
+
+Without a shadow of envy, Nancy watched her, proudly.  Alma was easily
+the prettiest girl in the school--everyone must like her, everything
+must go smoothly and gaily for her.  There were people like that in the
+world--people who didn't have to be wise or prudent--some kindly
+providence seemed always to protect them from the consequences of their
+lack of common sense, just as kindly nature protects the butterflies.
+
+The dancers stopped one by one.  Some gathered in groups about, the
+fire, others clustered in the window-seats--one or two practical souls
+had gone to their rooms to put away some of their things.
+
+Charlotte's nimble fingers began to wander idly among the keys.  Nancy
+watched her curiously, listening in some surprise to the change in the
+music.  She felt an instinctive fondness for this big, whimsical,
+friendly girl, and knew very well that underneath her nonsense lay a
+streak of some fine quality that would make an unshakeable foundation
+for a genuine friendship.  She would have liked to talk to Charlotte by
+herself; but Charlotte was already talking in her own way.  She seemed
+to have quite forgotten Nancy and everyone else in the room, and with
+her head bent over the keys, she was playing for herself.  Little by
+little, the other girls stopped talking.  She did not notice that at
+all.  Nancy listened to her playing in astonishment.  It was far beyond
+anything like ordinary schoolgirl facility.  It was full of genuine
+talent and poetry, now smooth and lyrical, and again as capricious and
+impish as some of her own moods.
+
+She raised her head, and looked at Nancy with an absent-minded smile.
+
+"Like music?"  Nancy nodded.
+
+"I believe you really do.  You aren't just saying so, are you?  Well, I
+like you--ever so much.  Listen, don't get the idea that everything I
+say is meant to be funny--sometimes--I'm very serious--you wouldn't
+believe it, would you?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+A QUARREL
+
+You had your choice, at Miss Leland's, between studying, and doing what
+the large majority of the girls did; namely, making friends, reading
+novels during your study periods, and leaving it to Providence to
+decide whether you passed your examinations or not.  The teachers were
+lenient souls, with the exception of Miss Drinkwater, the Latin
+teacher, who was unreasonably irritable when her pupils came to class
+armed with the seraphic smiles of ignorance, and a number of convincing
+excuses, which invariably failed to convince Miss Drinkwater.  In
+consequence, very few of the girls pursued their studies in that
+classic tongue longer than the first month.  "What point was there in
+doing so?" they argued coolly; none of them had any aspirations toward
+college, and nearly all of them harbored a dread of learning anything
+that might show on the surface, and thereby discourage the attentions
+of the college youths which were of infinitely more importance in their
+eyes, as indeed, in the eyes of their fond mothers, likewise, than the
+attainment of the scholarly graces.
+
+Miss Leland's was one of those schools instituted primarily to meet the
+necessity of our young plutocrats for mingling with their own peculiar
+kind--"forming advantageous connections," it is called--the question of
+education was secondary if not quite negligible.  The daughters of
+steel magnates came from Pittsburgh to meet the daughters of railroad
+magnates from New York, and incidentally to meet one another's
+brothers, at the small social functions which Miss Leland gave
+ostensibly for the purpose of developing in her charges an easy poise
+and the most correct drawing-room manners.
+
+The girls, for the most part, regarded lessons as a wholly unnecessary
+adjunct to their school duties, and treated them as such.  And this was
+all very well indeed, so far as they were concerned.  From school they
+would plunge into the whirl of their debutante season, and from that
+into marriage--it was all clearly mapped out for them, and the shadow
+of any serious doubt as to the course of their careers never fell
+across their serenely trustful indolence.
+
+There is something peculiarly vitiating in such an atmosphere.
+Pleasure was regarded not merely as an embroidery on the sober fustian
+of life, but as the very warp and woof of it; where the most sober
+consideration was that of winning popularity and the opportunity of
+social advantages, where the clothes to be bought and the parties to be
+given during the holidays were already the subject of endless absorbing
+discussions.
+
+The effect of all this on each of the Prescotts was diametrically
+opposed.  Alma had adapted herself to it as easily as to a new cloak.
+Not having any stubborn notions of her own, she was as malleable to
+such an environment as a piece of modelling clay in warm water.
+Pretty, good-humored, easily led, she swam into a rather meaningless
+popularity inside of four days.  This Nancy was glad of, but her
+satisfaction was not unmixed.  She saw Alma gradually undergoing a
+change that threatened to damage her own steadying influence over her
+sister, and to divide their sympathies.  Alma was only too ready, and
+too well suited temperamentally, to lose sight of the difference
+between her own circumstances, and those of the girls with whom she was
+now associated.  Indeed the very fact that she could do so, while Nancy
+could not, lay at the root of the problem that had begun to worry
+Nancy.  Aside from minor changes in Alma, such as, for instance, a new
+little affectedness of manner, unconsciously borrowed from Mildred
+Lloyd, and her use of Mildred's particular slang phrases, Nancy had
+noticed in her sister at times a tinge of impatience, and a little air
+of superiority, with which Alma unwillingly listened to her when she
+tried to talk to her seriously.  Nancy began to feel, unhappily, that
+Alma was coming to resent her efforts to guide her and advise her in
+regard to various small matters, and worst of all, that Alma was
+privately beginning to look upon her as rather unnecessarily serious,
+and even old-maidish.
+
+It was impossible for Nancy to lose the feeling that she had that her
+mother had made a mistake in sending them to Miss Leland's, which gave
+them little or nothing that they could use, and was very likely to
+affect even her own steady vision of their circumstances and
+opportunities.  She was continually trying to counteract the
+consequences of this mistake; but Alma was less than willing to take
+her point of view.
+
+Nancy still clung to her plan of getting herself ready for college;
+never for a moment could she lose sight of the fact that in all
+probability she would have to make her own living, which Alma, like her
+mother, was very ready to forget, counting always as they did on happy
+chance, to smooth out the future for them into a sunny vista.  It was
+not that Nancy was a pessimist.  She simply believed that good luck was
+something more or less of one's own making.  She was full of eagerness
+and enthusiasm for life, as ardent as an ambitious boy, and restive to
+make a trial of her own capabilities.  She knew that there was a
+possibility of her uncle's providing for them, after all, in spite of
+his own very clear hints to the contrary; but on the other hand, there
+remained the fact that he was an eccentric old fellow, more than
+equally likely to bequeath his entire fortune to some freakish project,
+or obscure charity organization.
+
+It was not a very easy task to study seriously at Miss Leland's.  An
+earnest student was immediately dubbed, vividly enough, if inelegantly,
+a "greasy grind"--and was left more or less to her own devices; but if
+Nancy was not as popular as Alma, she was regarded with a good deal of
+respect and genuine admiration by the other girls, and in Charlotte
+Spencer she had found a really devoted friend.
+
+Underneath her apparent rattle-patedness, Charlotte concealed from the
+view of those for whom she had no especial regard a stratum of rather
+unusual common sense, mingled with an idealism and a youthful ardor
+which few would have suspected in her nature.  Opinions concerning her
+varied widely.  Mildred Lloyd considered her crude, for example; most
+of the girls thought her simply amusing and odd, and hardly knew how to
+account for some of her queer, serious moods.  In one way or another,
+without apparently studying at all, she managed always to take the
+highest marks in the school.
+
+She was the only daughter of a very rich Western mine-owner, a widower,
+who found the problem of managing this child of his more difficult than
+any commercial nut he had ever had to crack.  He had only the vaguest
+notions as to what was necessary for a girl's career, and imagined that
+by sending his daughter to a fashionable Eastern school, he was getting
+at the heart of the solution.  Charlotte wanted to study music, "not
+like a boarding-school miss," she told Nancy.  "I want to make it the
+real thing.  I tell you I don't know anything about it--but I'm going
+to, yet."  Old Mr. Spencer, while he had no objections to one of the
+arts as a ladylike accomplishment, felt that it was not exactly
+respectable for a girl to go into it seriously, just why, he would have
+been at a loss to say.  "You know," Charlotte had explained, with her
+humorous smile, "there is a notion that it's all right for a 'lady' to
+dabble in anything, painting, music, or embroidery and so on, so long
+as she doesn't attempt to make a profession of it, or think of making
+money by it.  Of course this idea is changing now a bit, but people
+like Mildred Lloyd, for instance, and all her kind, still think it's
+not perfectly '_nice_' as she puts it."  It was not in the least that
+Mr. Spencer had even a grain of snobbishness in his rough, vigorous
+makeup, so far as either himself or his three sons were concerned; his
+very love for his "Charlie," as he called her, made him stubborn in his
+ideas concerning what was best for her.  He wanted her to have
+everything that he could give her, and he gave her what he imagined her
+mother would have wanted him to give.  It was because Charlotte
+understood that his stubbornness grew out of his adoration of her, that
+she good-naturedly gave in to his wishes.
+
+"In good time, I'll do what I want, of course," she said with serene
+self-confidence.  "But the least I can do for darling old Dad is to
+make him believe that all the time I'm doing what _he_ wants.  He _is_
+such a lamb, you know."
+
+The warm friendship that grew up between the two girls had a strong
+bond in the similarity of their position at Miss Leland's, and in the
+circumstances of their being there, as well as in their mutual sympathy
+with each other's ideas.
+
+It was a Saturday afternoon, late in October, when the days were
+rapidly shortening into wintry dusks, and there was even the hint of an
+early snow in the slate-colored skies, against which the bare, stiff
+branches of the trees shivered in a nipping wind.  Nancy, all ruddy,
+and breezy from a brisk walk with Charlotte, had come up to her room to
+finish an English paper.  Across the hall a group of girls had gathered
+around Katherine Leonard's chafing dish, from which the tantalizing
+smell of thick, hot fudge was beginning to pervade the corridors, and
+distract the thoughts of the more studious from their unsocial but
+conscientious labors.
+
+"Come on in, Nance," called Alma, waving a sticky spoon invitingly.
+"Surely you aren't going to work now, are you?"
+
+Nancy hesitated, her hand on the door-knob.  They all looked so jolly,
+the room so cosy, and the warm, chocolaty smell of the fudge was almost
+irresistible.  Nancy's nose twitched at the delicious odor, and she
+smiled uncertainly.
+
+"I've got to finish my English," she began.
+
+"Oh, bother your English," cried Dolly Parker, "None of us have even
+looked at ours yet.  Don't be a 'grind'--come on."
+
+"You're such a shark at it, Miss Garnett wouldn't bother you if you
+loafed for a month," added Maizie Forrest.  This was quite true--and
+that was the trouble.  It was just because Miss Garnett was so lenient
+that Nancy felt the responsibility of keeping up in her work resting
+heavily on herself.  Nearly all the girls loafed shamelessly, and Nancy
+had to guard against the temptation to imitate them.  She knew that she
+would have to pass a stiff examination in English to enter college, and
+that it mattered nothing to Miss Garnett whether she passed or not.
+
+"Well, the point is that I've got so little to do on it that I might as
+well finish it up and feel free," she said, finally.  "I'll come in a
+little while, so don't, for goodness' sake, eat all the fudge."
+
+"Oh, Nancy, you make me tired," pouted Alma.  "If you're going to be
+such an old poke, you don't deserve any fudge."
+
+Nancy only laughed in reply, and calmly went in to her room, and shut
+the door.  She flung her sweater on her bed, sent her scarlet
+tam-o'-shanter after it, and then stood for a moment, her hands in the
+pockets of her skirt, looking about her.  The Prescotts' room was
+certainly not the cosiest and most inviting in the school, and she had
+listened long to Alma's petitions for an easy chair, and a new lamp to
+take the place of the green-shaded student's lamp which by its hard,
+sharp light intensified the severe bareness of the little place.
+Besides the two beds, there were the two desks, two stiff desk-chairs,
+and the two small bureaus.  Nothing had been added to soften the chilly
+aspect except a pair of cheap, chintz curtains at the window, and a few
+small cushions on the window-seat.  They had no pictures or
+photographs, no rugs, no tea service--none of the hundred and one
+little knickknacks with which the other girls managed to turn their
+bedrooms into luxurious little dens.  Consequently, they were never
+besieged by bands of hilarious callers, and Alma herself was never in
+her room any more than she could help.  At night she preferred a
+dressing-gown chat in Mildred's room, or in Kay Leonard's; even when
+she studied, which occupied, indeed, little enough of her time, she
+sought a more congenial atmosphere, and Nancy, except for Charlotte's
+company, was a good deal by herself.  But there was nothing to be done
+about it.  She could not go to the expense of a new rug and an easy
+chair and a new lamp, and that was all there was to it.  Alma felt
+ashamed of the mute confession of a narrow purse, expressed by the
+chill simplicity of the room; losing her memory of their straitened
+means amid the easy affluence of the other girls, she became more and
+more sulky against Nancy for her rigid economy.  She contended that she
+saw no reason for it--that Nancy was carrying it to unnecessary
+extremes.
+
+With a shrug of her shoulders, Nancy began to rummage in her desk for
+her half-finished English paper, and then sat down to it, grimly
+determined to concentrate on it, and to drive away all distracting
+thoughts.  She forgot about the fudge-party, and an hour went by before
+she looked up with a sigh, and carefully glancing over her finished
+pages folded them neatly inside her copy of "Burke's Speeches."  All
+her work was finished, and she could look forward to Sunday with a
+comfortable anticipation of unhampered freedom.  It was still half an
+hour before the dressing bell would ring, so she put on her kimono and,
+her sociable mood having passed, tucked herself up on the window-seat
+with a book.
+
+In a little while the door opened, and Alma came in to change her
+frock.  Nancy glanced up, and saw in an instant that Alma was annoyed.
+She felt troubled.  It seemed as if every day they were growing farther
+apart.  They no longer had those happy chats together which had bound
+them close by affection and sympathy.  Alma no longer sought her as her
+confidant, and seemed to resent her advice rather than to seek it.
+Instead, the younger girl had, as it were, transferred her affection
+and her admiration to the headstrong and annoyingly self-assured
+Mildred Lloyd.  Mildred had deigned to pronounce Alma pretty, and
+"interesting," and had "taken her up" as the phrase is, thereby
+completely turning poor Alma's head so that she was gradually merging
+even her personality into a pale imitation of Mildred's blase
+expressions and mannerisms.  Alma was not left ignorant of the fact
+that Mildred's friendship, like her fancy, was extremely variable, and
+that she was quite likely to turn a cold shoulder to her new chum,
+without deigning to provide any reason for doing so.  But Alma
+preferred to believe that in her case Mildred's interest would not
+wane, just as she preferred to forget her early prejudice of their
+first meeting with Mildred.
+
+An uncomfortable little silence reigned, which Nancy pretended to be
+unaware of, by giving a great deal of attention to her book, although
+the light from the window was so faint that no human eye could have
+spelt out the words on the page.  But when, at length, she was forced
+by the lateness of the hour to begin dressing, it was impossible to
+preserve the wretched silence any longer, or to speak as if nothing
+were the matter.
+
+"You--you seem worried, Alma," she began hesitatingly.  "Is there
+something on your mind?"
+
+"I'm not worried a bit," returned Alma coldly.
+
+"Well--are you angry about something?"
+
+There was a silence.  Alma flung her hair over her shoulder and began
+to brush the ends vigorously, while Nancy watched the operation with an
+intentness that showed her mind to be on other things.  Presently Alma
+said in a grave voice:
+
+"I know that it's none of my business, of course, but I _do_ think,
+Nancy, that you are making a mistake."
+
+"A mistake," repeated Nancy, in amazement.  "How?  How do you mean?"
+
+"Well, it seems to me that as far as you are concerned, it has been
+simply money wasted to send you here."
+
+"Why, what on earth are you talking about, Alma?" exclaimed Nancy, her
+temper beginning to rise in spite of her amusement at the fluffy Alma's
+gravely judicial air.  Inasmuch as she studied harder and more
+seriously than any girl in the school, and rivalled Charlotte in
+brilliant marks, it was interesting as well as irritating to learn that
+Alma considered her unsuccessful.
+
+"Well, you know as well as I do that Mother's purpose in sending us
+here was for us to make friends.  There isn't a girl in the school that
+you show the least interest in, except Charlotte, and
+Charlotte--well----"  Alma shrugged her shoulders, expressing thereby
+what she hesitated to put into words.  Instantly Nancy flared up.
+Usually the most even tempered and controlled of girls, she could not
+keep down her anger when it was roused by Alma's periodic fits of
+snobbishness.
+
+"What about Charlotte?  Why do you shrug your shoulders like that?
+Because Charlotte isn't considered perfectly 'nice' by Mildred?
+Because Mildred thinks Charlotte 'rather ordinary--a bit crude,
+don'tcherknow?'  She's the _realest_ girl in the school, and everyone
+of them knows it, too!  She's the only one whose mind isn't forever
+running on beaux and dances and other girls' faults.  She's the only
+one of them who has brains and a heart--she's the only real aristocrat
+of the whole lot!  She's the only one of them whose friendship I'd give
+tuppence-ha'penny for----"
+
+Alma quailed a little under Nancy's indignation--she was indeed a bit
+ashamed of her snobbish remark; but she did not lower her flag.
+
+"That's no reason why you should let all the other girls know it.  We
+need all the friends we can get, and we can't _afford_ to lose this
+opportunity of making advantageous connections."
+
+This last bit was rather an unfortunate choice of words, smacking as it
+did just a bit too strongly of Mildred to soothe Nancy's irate ear at
+just that moment.
+
+"_I_ didn't come here to make friends simply for what they could give
+me--regardless of whether I liked them or not.  And I think it's the
+most _contemptible_ thing in the world to toady to girls simply because
+they are rich or fashionable, and may invite you to parties and things
+that you can never repay.  And it's just that snobbish
+selfishness--that complete loss of self-respect for the sake of
+self-interest that makes so many poor people contemptible.  I'd rather
+die before I'd play the role of little sister to the rich."  Her voice
+began to quiver, and she had a wretched feeling that she was very near
+tears--tears not of anger so much as of genuine unhappiness.  She felt
+as if every word she uttered was doing more damage, and her heart ached
+because she was quarrelling with Alma, and because Alma was changing
+more every day.  She longed to throw her arms around her sister, and
+kiss away the memory of every word she had uttered, but stubborn pride,
+as much a fault with Nancy as a virtue, held her back.
+
+"Do you mean that I'm toadying?" asked Alma, her eyes growing wide.  "I
+know now what you think of me--and I know that you're simply jealous of
+my fondness for Mildred," she went on passionately.  "I don't know what
+has come over you anyway, Nancy--you don't approve of a single thing I
+do----"
+
+"Oh, Alma--darling!  How _can_ you say such things?"  The tears began
+to roll down Nancy's cheeks.  "Whatever put such thoughts into your
+head, when you _know_ how much I love you.  It's not me, but you who
+have changed.  Can't you see that I can't let my work go just to play
+around with a lot of girls who don't care a rap for me, myself?  Life
+isn't a song and a dance for _us_, Alma--and we can't waste our time
+just for a little popularity with girls who'd forget us to-morrow.
+Mildred----"
+
+"Oh, go ahead, and say a lot of mean things about Mildred," interrupted
+Alma bitterly.  "You never liked her.  You took a prejudice to her at
+first sight.  You never even tried to know her.  I never heard of
+anything so unjust in my life!  You don't think that anyone is capable
+of a real friendship but you and Charlotte.  Mildred is every bit as
+good a friend.  Just because she's rich you think that she must be
+selfish--you're the most narrow-minded girl I ever knew.  It's the same
+way with all my friends--you think Frank Barrows is just an idler--a
+conceited little----"
+
+"What on earth did I ever say against Frank Barrows?" Nancy defended
+herself weakly.
+
+"Oh, you never _say_ anything.  You just look--and I know perfectly
+well what you think.  It seems as if we can never agree about anything,
+any more.  Now, this afternoon you might have been just a little bit
+sociable--instead of that you shut yourself up, as if you thought all
+those girls were simply a lot of sillies; but you were able to spend an
+hour and a half with Charlotte."
+
+"I had to finish my English paper, and that's all there was to it,"
+retorted Nancy.  "In any other school under the sun work has to come
+before play.  Neither one of us can afford to take advantage of the
+leniency of the teachers here--if I did only what they required I
+wouldn't get to college in ten years.  And I've got to get to college,
+no matter what _Mildred_ thinks of me.  I'm sorry she doesn't approve
+of my behavior, but it can't be helped."  In her hurt anger, she had
+lost her head a little bit, or she would not have thrown that last
+stone at Alma's chosen friend.  For the time being at least, it was
+impossible to repair the breach that the two wounded, indignant girls
+had made between each other.
+
+Too sick at heart for tears, too despairingly conscious of the
+uselessness of any attempt at reconciliation, Nancy began to dress in a
+miserable silence.
+
+During dinner Nancy made a pretense at eating, but she could not join
+in the chatter with the other girls.  Once or twice Charlotte glanced
+at her, but with her instinctive gentle tact appeared not to notice
+Nancy's blues.
+
+At her table, Alma was feverishly gay; as a matter of fact she was on
+the point of tears.  Never before had they had such a quarrel, never
+before had she seen Nancy so heedlessly angry, never before had they
+deliberately tried to say things to hurt each other.  Waves of
+desperate homesickness assailed her, and with the memory of happy
+nights when they had gossiped together in their room at the little
+brown house, a lump ached in her throat.  She wanted Nancy more than
+anyone else in the world.  What was it they had said to each other that
+had caused such a dreadful coldness between them?  She tried to tell
+herself that Nancy had misjudged her, that Nancy was wrong, and that
+she was right in maintaining her ground; but listening to the banter
+that went on around her, struggling to keep up her own end of it
+bravely, she felt that not one girl in the room, nor any pleasure in
+the world was of the slightest value to her so long as she did not have
+Nancy as her confidant and dearest friend.
+
+With these thoughts battering at the foolish pride in their hearts it
+would have taken only a whispered word to send the sisters into one
+another's embrace, but the reconciliation for which they were both
+longing so piteously was postponed by an incident which threatened to
+make their quarrel even more serious.  It was simply the outcome of an
+unfortunate chance.  For some time both the girls had known that Miss
+Leland had planned to give them different roommates, since she thought
+it a good idea for sisters to be separated so that they could make
+closer friendships with other girls.
+
+After dinner she spoke of this again, not to Nancy but to Alma, leaving
+it to the younger girl to announce the change to Nancy.  She had, of
+course, no knowledge of their quarrel, nor could she have possibly
+gauged the unfortunate timing of the change.
+
+Nancy went up to her room directly after dinner, not waiting for the
+usual hour of music and dancing, and giving as her excuse the pretense
+that she had some mending to do.
+
+She did, indeed, get out her work-basket as a sort of defense against
+unwelcome intrusion, but with a stocking drawn over her hand, she sat
+with her back to the door, and gave herself up to the sad consolation
+of tears.  In a little while the door opened.  Someone came in.  Nancy
+bent over her stocking, and began to run a threadless needle through a
+"Jacob's-ladder"; from the corner of her eye she saw Alma busily
+engaged in taking some of her things out of the bureau-drawers.  Alma
+was as painstaking in keeping her own face concealed as Nancy, though
+she tried to hum a tune under her breath.  The silence became
+intolerable, but diffidence weighted their tongues.  Each one of them
+longed to throw her pride to the winds and sue for a reconciliation;
+but the fear of having her overtures met with coldness held her back.
+At length Alma said in a voice which she vainly tried to make natural
+and casual:
+
+"Miss Leland has changed us.  Charlotte Spencer is going to be your
+roommate from now on--and--and I'm going in with--with Mildred."
+
+"That's--a--a good idea," replied Nancy; sarcasm was a thousand miles
+from her mind, and she spoke really only for the sake of sounding as if
+all differences had been forgotten; but a more ill-chosen sentence
+could not have fallen from her lips.
+
+"I suppose--you--you're glad to be rid of me," said Alma, her lips
+quivering.  "Anyway, you'll have Charlotte, and she's ever so much more
+congenial with you than I am."
+
+Nancy did not answer.  If Alma had not made that last reference to
+Charlotte she would have had Nancy back in a moment, but there is a
+little devil who takes a delight in twisting people's tongues when they
+most need to be inspired with the right thing to say.
+
+With her night-gown and dressing-gown over her arm, and her sponge-bag
+in her hand, Alma walked in silence to the door.  There she paused, and
+like Lot's wife flung back at Nancy one piteous parting look, which,
+alas, met only the back of Nancy's down-bent head.  The door closed.
+
+Nancy sprang up, and crossed the room, running, while the spools from
+her overturned basket rolled off placidly under the bed.  Then she
+paused; pride conquered the tenderness in her heart at that moment,
+bringing in its trail a sequence of unhappy days.
+
+"No---it won't do to admit I'm wrong.  I'm not, and I'll just let her
+find it out."
+
+And having voiced this stern resolution, she flung herself down on the
+bed and, burying her face in the pillows, cried herself into a doze;
+while, separated from her by a thin partition of lath and plaster, Alma
+made up her new bed, and bedewed it with her doleful tears.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE OGRE REAPPEARS
+
+"Hope you haven't forgotten that you've bound yourself in an engagement
+with me for the theatre to-morrow, Nannie, old dear," called Charlotte
+from her customary location during leisure hours--namely the piano
+bench.  "I've reserved seats for 'The Countess Betsey'--nice, light,
+loads of good Viennese tunes--nothing lofty about it.  Miss Drinkwater
+had a cute little plan for us--wanted us to go to hear--or see--I don't
+know just what the right word is--some production of Euripides in the
+original.  I said 'No'--very politely.  Too politely perhaps--I had to
+repeat it three separate and distinct times.  I explained to her that
+while I just adored Euripides, and loved nothing better than Greek as
+she is spoke, my constitution craved something a bit gayer than
+'Medea'--in the original.  I hinted modestly that I'd been overworking
+a bit lately--and that my mighty brain needed something that it didn't
+have to chew eighty-five times before swallowing.  Aren't you going to
+thank me?"
+
+"Oh, I do--thanks _horribly_," laughed Nancy.  "Can't you see us
+sitting through a merry little Greek play, trying to weep in the right
+places, and not to laugh when everyone but the villainess had been
+stabbed or poisoned or fed to the lions?"
+
+"Gee--but couldn't we be lofty when we got back?" said Charlotte.  "I'd
+say, 'How sublime were those lines in Act II, Scene 4, where, in a
+voice thrilling with sublime hate, the frenzied woman shrieks "Logos
+Nike anthropos Socrates!"'  And you would glow with fervor, and say
+'_Zoue mou sas agapo_.'  I tell you what, when it comes to dead
+languages----"
+
+"It's too late, I hope, for you to get enthusiastic about the idea
+now," interrupted Nancy, firmly.  "It wouldn't be a bit unlike you to
+get so carried away with it, that you'd suddenly change your mind about
+not going--and I'll tell you right now, that if you do I am
+emphatically _not_ with you.  I don't like to improve my mind when I'm
+on a holiday--and Saturdays come only once a week."
+
+"You should thirst for every opportunity to improve your
+understanding," reproved Charlotte, who could chatter away like a
+magpie, while her nimble fingers never lost a note, or stumbled in the
+rhythm of the lively dance tune she was playing.
+
+"Don't forget _our_ little party, Alma," said Mildred Lloyd.
+"Mademoiselle is going to chaperone us--I asked her yesterday.  We're
+going in on the eleven-fifty-four, and the boys are going to meet us at
+Delmonico's at one."
+
+Charlotte cast a sidelong glance at Nancy; she understood that Alma
+possessed all this information already, and that Mildred was making the
+announcement simply to excite the other girls' curiosity.
+
+Since their quarrel Alma and Nancy, chiefly for the sake of outward
+appearances, had called an armistice.  But while Nancy had not confided
+the first hint of the quarrel to Charlotte, poor Alma, who could never
+smother anything in her own heart, had unbosomed herself completely to
+Mildred.  Needless to say, Mildred, who had disliked Nancy from the
+beginning, was not warmed toward her by any of the details in Alma's
+narrative that concerned herself.  She knew that Alma had not told
+Nancy about their arrangements to go to the theatre, meeting two boys
+in town, of whom Frank Barrows was to be Alma's cavalier; and
+consequently, she surmised, quite correctly, that Nancy would be hurt
+when she spoke about the plan.
+
+Alma shot a quick, uncertain look at her sister, and blushed; but Nancy
+only smiled, and asked, casually:
+
+"What are you going to see?"
+
+Alma's expression changed to one of relief.
+
+"'Oh, Trixie!'  Aren't we, Mildred?"
+
+"Uh-huh.  Everyone says it's a scream, and the music is perfect.  I
+wanted to go to a regular play, but then I thought the boys would like
+a musical comedy better.  By the way, Alma, I think I'll ask Miss
+Leland to let us go in on the ten-fourteen--I want to do some shopping.
+It'll get us in at eleven, and we'll have two hours.  I promised Madame
+Lepage that I'd come in to talk over a dress I want for the
+holidays--and then I've simply got to get a new hat."
+
+The following morning, after the first study period, which closed the
+labors of the day at nine-thirty, Nancy heard a timid knock at the
+door.  It was Alma, gloved and bonneted in her "Sunday-best," but with
+an agitated expression that was ill-suited to her festive appearance.
+It was the first time that she had seen Nancy alone since the night of
+their quarrel.
+
+"Oh, Charlotte's not here, is she?" she said, evidently much relieved.
+
+"No, she walked up to the village to post a letter.  We aren't going in
+until the eleven-fifty-four.  Did you want to see her?"
+
+"No, oh, no.  You see, I--I----" Alma stammered, turning scarlet, and
+fidgeting nervously with the button on her glove.  "You see, I wondered
+if you could lend me--lend me just a little bit of money.  I--I'll pay
+it right back.  You see, I don't want Mildred--I mean this is a sort of
+Dutch treat----"
+
+"Why, of course," laughed Nancy, touched and a little bit hurt by
+Alma's embarrassment.  Heretofore they had borrowed and lent to each
+other without the thought of explaining why they needed the money, and
+her sister's constraint marked with painful clearness her sense of the
+coldness between them.  "How much do you want?"
+
+"Could you lend me--ten dollars?  Or seven would do.  I won't use it
+all, of course, but--but it's better to have it."
+
+Ten dollars was a good bit more than either of the girls had spent on
+any pleasure before the Porterbridges' dance; but Nancy said nothing,
+and going to her top bureau drawer, took out her pocketbook and gave
+Alma the bill without a second glance into the purse.
+
+"Oh, _thank_ you--oh, Nancy!"  Alma looked into her sister's face, and
+the tears came suddenly to her eyes.
+
+"Goodness, you don't have to thank me like that," said Nancy, flushing.
+"You know that it's no more my money than yours, dear----"
+
+"You're--you're so good to me, Nancy---oh--I didn't mean----" and all
+at once Alma, who could restrain her sweet impulses no more easily than
+her weak ones, flung her arms around Nancy, and burst out crying.  "Oh,
+darling Nancy, don't be angry with me any more.  I can't bear it!"
+
+"Alma, dearest---I'm _not_ angry--oh, I'm so glad--so glad!" cried
+Nancy, in tears, too; they clung together fiercely, every hard word
+forgotten in the joy of "making up."
+
+"There, darling, you'll miss your train.  There now, it's all just as
+it was.  Oh, see, your hat's all over your eye"--they began to laugh
+tremulously.  "You'd better put a little cold water on your face,
+sweetheart--and dust a little powder over it."
+
+They hugged each other again, and, as Alma ran down the hall, Nancy
+stood at the door watching her, with brighter eyes than she had had for
+a week.  But when Alma had disappeared below the landing of the stairs,
+she walked back into the room with a sober expression.
+
+A quarter of an hour later she went again to the top bureau drawer to
+get out her gloves, and then thinking for the first time of the amount
+of money she had left herself, realized that she could have barely
+sufficient, if that, to defray her expenses of her own day in town.
+Each of the girls had taken fifteen dollars to last them as pocket
+money up until Thanksgiving--a little she had already spent on
+shoe-laces, ribbons and so on, and she had given Alma ten.  A glance
+into her purse showed her to her dismay that she had left herself
+exactly fifty-four cents.  She knew, of course, that she could easily
+borrow from Charlotte, but this she was absolutely unwilling to do,
+first because she did not want to have to write to her mother for more
+money, and secondly because she did not want to do anything that she
+would not have Alma do.  To borrow from Charlotte was one thing, but to
+have Alma follow her precedent was unwise; for in the first place, Alma
+would borrow from Mildred Lloyd or Kay Leonard, and in the second
+place, Alma might not know just where to set her limits.  Nancy dropped
+the purse, and shut the drawer quietly.  After all, she told herself,
+she had not deprived herself of so much pleasure that she should pity
+herself.  It was a beautiful day, clear and sparkling, and she would
+enjoy herself just as much on a walk across country as at the "Countess
+Betsey."  Nancy had the happy faculty of banishing any regrets for a
+pleasure which she could not reasonably take, and finding a substitute
+for it with perfect cheerfulness.  The prospect of a free day, which
+she could spend as she liked, was as full of attraction for her as her
+original plan for the matinee had been, and when Charlotte strolled in
+upon her, she was whistling softly as she pulled on her scarlet
+tam-o'-shanter.
+
+"Listen, Charlotte--don't kill me--but I'm afraid I've got to stay here
+after all.  Do you mind awfully?"  Naturally she could not give the
+reasons for her default on the theatre party; and because she had
+forgotten to think up a plausible excuse she flushed slightly.
+
+"Oh, come now!" howled Charlotte in dismay.  "You can't do anything
+like that.  There's not an earthly reason why you should stay here, and
+you know it."  Then quickly her singularly delicate tact warned her not
+to press Nancy.  The very fact that her friend had not given a reason
+for breaking their engagement was enough for Charlotte to know that she
+should not ask for one.  The two girls understood each other so well
+that they knew instinctively when to respect one another's silences.
+
+"Well, if you can't, you can't, I suppose," she said quietly.  "I'm
+awfully sorry; but we can go in next Saturday.  If you have anything to
+do, however, there's no point in my staying around out here.  I'll go
+on in anyway.  Do you want me to get anything for you?"
+
+"Not a thing," replied Nancy, feeling an intense gratitude toward
+Charlotte for not disputing her decision with her.  "I'm glad you are
+going."
+
+"Well, sit down and talk to me while I'm dressing.  Alma's gone, hasn't
+she?"
+
+"Yes.  Oh, wear your brown hat, Charlotte--the one with the little
+feather on it."
+
+"My dear, what does it matter--Drinkwater won't appreciate it."
+
+"Doesn't matter.  You'll be a thing of beauty whether she knows it or
+not, and that's reason enough for wearing it."
+
+"Want me to bring out a pound of those scrumptious soft chocolates from
+Mailliards?  Then we can have a regular festival on 'em to-night, if
+you're a good girl while I'm gone."
+
+When Charlotte had taken her departure, Nancy, who had walked over to
+the station with her, struck out through the village for a good walk
+before luncheon.  The country beyond Broadmore was picturesque, and
+Nancy loved nothing better than to swing along without plan or purpose,
+cutting across a field here, or turning into a bit of glowing woodland
+there, as her fancy prompted.  In her short full skirt, her small feet
+laced into sturdy low-heeled boots, she could negotiate fences and
+brooks with the freedom of a boy, revelling in a feeling of
+adventurousness and liberty.  The sun had melted the frost of the early
+morning, the ground was soft, and the air mild though bracing.  In the
+wide puddles which had gathered in the depressions of the country
+roads, a sky mottled with huge, lazy clouds was reflected.  A cock
+crowed on some distant haystack.  Now and then a mischievous wind rose,
+bending the long brown grass as it swept along, and making Nancy catch
+her breath in a sort of jubilant excitement, as it blew into her face,
+and spun out wisps of her hair behind her.
+
+She had turned after about two miles of walking, and was approaching
+the pike on the school side of the railroad station, when she heard
+behind her the patient creaking of the old hack, and the familiar
+clucking of the driver to his lean and melancholy steed.  As it came
+beside her, she glanced up curiously; then her eyes grew round, and she
+stared in incredulous amazement.  For, bolt upright on the decrepit
+back seat, his head erect under its wide-brimmed black felt hat, his
+thin hands folded on the crook of his cane, sat--her Uncle Thomas.  She
+lacked breath to speak to him; but just then he turned his eyes and saw
+her.  For a moment he merely gazed at her without a glimmer of
+recognition and she had half persuaded herself that his brief visit to
+the cottage had not been long enough to have fixed her features in his
+mind, when his face suddenly broke into an almost boyish smile.
+
+"Hey, driver--stop!  Whoa!  Why, my dear child--bless me, this is very
+fortunate!"  With one foot on the step, he leaned out and clasped her
+hand.  "Get in, get in, my dear--I was on my way to see you.  And I
+nearly missed you, eh?"  Nancy clambered up beside him, and the driver,
+not receiving any orders to the contrary, clucked to his steed, which
+continued on its interrupted way.
+
+"Were you really going to visit us, Uncle?" asked Nancy.  "It's a pity
+that Alma isn't here.  She went in to the city--and it was just luck
+that I didn't go, too."  She smiled to herself, wondering if, after
+all, Providence had had some hand in the events of the morning which
+had kept her where she was.
+
+"Luck?  Well, I should say so.  I'd have been badly disappointed if my
+surprise had fallen through," chuckled Uncle Thomas, who was evidently
+in the best of spirits.  "Well, well--you're as ruddy as a ripe
+pomegranate, my dear."
+
+"I've just walked four miles," said Nancy.
+
+"Walked?  By yourself?  Now, that's a taste you've inherited from me.
+Fond of walking, aren't you?  Now, tell me how you are getting
+along--at school, I mean.  Like it, eh?"  He looked at her keenly, a
+twinkle hiding just under the surface of his gray eyes.
+
+"Yes, I like it.  I'm working awfully hard--I have to, or I wouldn't
+get anywhere, because it would be awfully easy to loaf at Miss
+Leland's," laughed Nancy; she had a feeling that he was waiting to get
+her opinion of the school, and she was afraid of sounding priggish, or
+as if she were trying to impress him with an idea of her industry.  So
+she chatted away about the girls, telling him about Charlotte
+particularly, describing the teachers, giving him an account of the
+routine, and so on, to all of which he listened as intently as if he
+were her father.
+
+"So you're swimming along.  Good.  And how is my other niece?  Is she
+working very hard?  Has she made lots of friends, eh?"  Again Nancy
+felt that he was pumping her, but she told him casually about Alma,
+taking care to say nothing that might sound as if she said it for
+effect, and he listened, nodding his head, and smiling.
+
+"Well, now--even if we can't have Alma with us, what do you say to
+giving up a holiday to an old gentleman?  Is that too much to ask?  The
+whim took me to run over here to-day and kidnap my two nieces; but if I
+can only have one, I'll take her, if she'll let me.  Will your
+'schoolma'am' let you come away with me?  I'd like to have you until
+to-morrow, and I'll get you back safe and sound."
+
+Nancy laughed.  Six months before, if anyone had told her that she
+would be going to visit her Uncle Thomas on that particular day, she
+would have thought the prophet quite mad; as it was she could hardly
+believe her ears.
+
+"I'd _love_ to do it.  Here's the school now--it won't take me a minute
+to get ready.  You speak to Miss Leland, Uncle Thomas.  I'm quite sure
+that I can go."
+
+A little more than an hour later Nancy found herself turning in the
+very old gate through the unfriendly bars of which she and Alma had
+peered on that distant rainy afternoon, feeling that they were gazing
+into a forbidden country.  Yet now nothing, it seemed, could be more
+natural than that she should be sitting beside her uncle, chatting away
+with him unconstrainedly.  Only the fact that he never mentioned her
+mother, nor suggested that she should even peep into the little brown
+house, made her feel uncomfortable.  Furthermore, he showed the same
+coldness on the subject of Alma, so that, in a way, Nancy felt that
+somehow she had almost unfairly won his affection for herself alone,
+and that she was enjoying a pleasure in which her mother and sister
+should have had an equal share.  On the other hand, she decided, at
+length, to say nothing either to Alma or to Mrs. Prescott about her
+visit; only because she was afraid that the knowledge of it might again
+lead them to false hopes, and to follies stimulated by those hopes.
+She felt sure that her uncle had come to see her, only because he had
+taken her at her word; that is to say, that he counted on her not in
+any way misunderstanding the purpose of his visit, or fancying that it
+gave promise of his relenting in his long-standing determination not to
+solve their financial problems for them.
+
+Aside from the fact that, although within a mile of the little brown
+cottage, she might have been a league away, and that she experienced
+several bad qualms of homesickness, Nancy thoroughly enjoyed that day.
+She lunched with her uncle in the big dining-room, sitting at the head
+of his table, while he placed himself at the foot.  And afterwards he
+showed her about the huge old house, taking her to his laboratory,
+explaining a great deal about scientific experiments which she did not
+understand, showing her his books and his curios.  As they passed along
+the corridor on the second floor, he paused a moment outside a room
+which was closed.  Then as if on a sudden impulse, he took a key out of
+his pocket, and opened the door, without saying anything.  It was a
+small room, rather bare, furnished with an almost Spartan simplicity;
+the sunlight beamed in, striking its full, red rays on the faded wall
+above the narrow, white iron bed, over which hung a picture of a
+lion-hunt, evidently cut out of some book or magazine--just such a
+picture as would strike the imagination of a lad of twelve.  The rest
+of the wall was mottled with other pictures, many of them unframed,
+clipped out of colored newspapers, and fixed to the wall-paper with
+pins; pictures of horses and steeple-chases, and Greek athletes, and
+American heroes; one, the largest, was a vivid representation of the
+Battle of Trafalgar, showing a perfect inferno of red and yellow flames
+and bursting bombs, and splintered ships, and drowning sailors clinging
+to planks and spars.  On the table between the windows stood a row of
+books, a few ill-treated looking lesson books hobnobbing like poor
+relations with other more self-confident works on "Woodcraft" and
+"Adventure."  The mantelpiece was burdened with a heterogeneous
+collection of boyish knickknacks, such as a sling, a bird's-nest, a
+rusty bowie-knife, and a decrepit old horse-pistol.
+
+For a moment Nancy looked about her in astonishment, then, as she
+understood, the tears came to her eyes, and she looked up at her uncle.
+The room had not been changed since her father had left it for
+boarding-school, twenty, thirty years before.  Mr. Prescott said
+nothing; but after a moment closed the door, locked it again, and
+walked away.
+
+"I'm going to have visitors for tea," he remarked, to turn the subject.
+"It's quite an eventful day for me; I rarely see anyone, as you know.
+But I thought that it might be pleasant for you to renew an
+acquaintance with a lady who seems to have taken a great fancy to you,
+and who, incidentally, is the only woman I know who has a full-sized
+allowance of common sense.  Though at times she is very unreasonable
+and quite as inconsistent as any of her sex."
+
+Nancy looked at him inquiringly, and he explained:
+
+"Miss Elizabeth Bancroft."  Whether he considered Miss Bancroft in the
+plural, as being a lady of many parts, or whether he had used the word
+"visitors" because she would be accompanied or followed by others, and
+if so how many others he expected he did not trouble himself to make
+clear; but the matter explained itself, when toward five o'clock, the
+sound of carriage wheels rattled out on the gravel drive, and in due
+time, Miss Bancroft laboriously descended from her equipage, assisted
+by her nephew, George Arnold.
+
+"My dear child, how delightful this is!  I'm so really glad to see
+you," exclaimed Miss Bancroft, taking Nancy's hands in both her own, as
+if she had known her all her life.  Her frank cordial manner sent a
+glow of pleasure to Nancy's cheeks.  "I hope you remember that you met
+my nephew--for his sake.  The idea that you might possibly have
+forgotten him has been troubling his vanity for a good eight hours."
+
+Nancy laughingly murmuring that she did remember Mr. Arnold, and
+blushing with shyness, shook hands with him.  She noticed, without
+dreaming of connecting the fact with herself, that he seemed to be in
+remarkably good spirits, and that they quite overflowed when he told
+her how nice it was to see her again, and what a jolly, funny sort of
+party the whole thing was anyway.
+
+"I wasn't going to bring George," observed Miss Bancroft.  "He's
+usually so tiresomely lazy about tearing himself away from his books or
+his own company, that I thought I wouldn't bother him to-day.  Then lo,
+and behold, he gets into an unbearable fit of sulks, complains that I'm
+always ready enough to drag him around with people who bore him to
+death, and leave him alone whenever anyone interesting turns up--in a
+word goes into a tantrum, and all but weeps with rage, so I had to
+bring him."  With that she indulged in a chuckle of mischievous
+laughter, and patted Nancy's cheek.
+
+A big wood-fire crackled noisily inside the huge stone chimney place in
+the living-room, and around it they all gathered in that comfortable,
+sociable spirit which is the characteristic mood for tea-time; everyone
+felt that they had really known everyone else rather longer than they
+had, and while Miss Bancroft poured out their tea, and chattered away
+with Uncle Thomas, who stood upright on the hearth-rug, drinking his
+tea from the mantelpiece, Nancy and Mr. Arnold chatted away as if it
+were impossible to say everything they wanted to in the course of one
+short hour or so.  As a rule Nancy had a very hard time overcoming her
+shyness when she had to talk to a young man.  She always felt that she
+might say something that they wouldn't understand, or which they might
+think affected or priggish--which were the two last sins in the world
+which she would have wished to be accused of, or with which anyone
+could accuse her.  But with Mr. Arnold, she lost every atom of
+self-consciousness.  He had travelled a great deal, and he had seen the
+world through a prism of mingled humor and sensitiveness, which gave
+his conversation the charm of a very original viewpoint on everything.
+He told her droll stories about his school days in England and
+Switzerland; recounted innumerable anecdotes about the various people
+he had seen, many of whom were celebrated for their brains or their
+follies; and altogether managed to make an hour shorter than many a
+minute.  And in some way, while he talked, he had a way of flattering
+the shy young girl not by words, but by a hundred indescribable little
+attentions, paid unconsciously, no doubt, and simply because he was
+thoroughly delighted to see her again.
+
+"My dear, you mustn't fail to pay me a visit during the holidays," Miss
+Bancroft urged.  "Remember that your father was a very great favorite
+of mine--and I should like to be a favorite of yours, if Uncle Thomas
+doesn't supplant me, quite."
+
+The old lady bent and kissed Nancy warmly as she prepared to take her
+departure.
+
+When the carriage had driven away Nancy and her uncle sat before the
+fire for a long time.  To remember that afternoon was always a delight
+to Nancy; and she particularly liked to recall the memory of sitting
+there, as the dusk grew deeper in the room and the daylight faded away
+into pale tints, and then into a deep, quiet blue, while they sat and
+watched the fire.  The flames had died down, but the long logs were
+wrapped in a hot, red glow, and every now and then they would pop
+softly and a spark would drop down into the ruddy embers.
+
+When dinner was over they sat by that fireside until bedtime, chatting
+away with a thoroughly delightful sense of camaraderie.
+
+Absolutely forgetting her mother and sister's ground of interest in
+Uncle Thomas, Nancy talked to him quite freely about her ambitions
+without the slightest feeling of constraint, impressing him
+unconsciously more than she could have done by the most fervid
+protestations with her sincerely eager wish to make her life for
+herself and by herself.  And he liked her earnest, youthful spirit of
+independence, perfectly innocent of any pose of
+"strong-mindedness"--which to a man like Mr. Prescott would have
+constituted one of the most unforgivable of feminine failings, ranking
+equally with the other extreme, of which poor, pretty, helpless Mrs.
+Prescott was an example.
+
+"So you want to work your way through college?  What's the idea?" he
+asked a bit gruffly.  "A pretty girl like you, I should think, would
+only be planning to marry and settle down in a home of her own."
+
+Nancy colored.
+
+"That would be awfully nice, but one can't make it a business, Uncle
+Thomas, or all the niceness would go out of it.  I think one ought to
+plan out all the difficult things, and leave all the--the dreadfully
+nice things to Chance, or Providence,--or--well, just let them happen
+where they belong."
+
+"You're a little Madame Solomon, aren't you, eh?" said Uncle Thomas
+with a short chuckle.  "And how are you going to work your way through
+college?  I shouldn't think that Miss Leland's would be exactly the
+place for a young lady with your ideas."
+
+"It wouldn't be, if I aired them all over the place--but I've learned
+to keep my ideas to myself," said Nancy, thinking how Mildred Lloyd
+would scoff at her "highbrow" ambitions.  Uncle Thomas shot a quick,
+keen glance at her from under his bushy brows.
+
+"Well, you are a wise young lady.  Now, who in the world taught you
+that--to keep your ideas to yourself?  Eh?"
+
+"Why, there's nothing very wise in that," said Nancy, surprised at his
+tone of warm approval.  "I know what I want, and if I'm with people who
+think it's a foolish thing to want, why, I don't talk about it--that's
+all."
+
+"Well, my dear, permit me to say that I think that in time you are
+going to have even more sense than my good Elizabeth."
+
+"You--you aren't laughing at me, Uncle Thomas?  Do you think I'm trying
+to show off?" asked Nancy timidly, unwilling to believe his sincere
+praise; and she looked anxiously and shyly into his face to detect a
+smile if there was one.  But there wasn't.
+
+"Laughing at you?  My dear child--what nonsense!  Bless my soul, but
+you are certainly my boy's daughter!"
+
+Then, after a short silence, and just as Nancy was on the point of
+telling him an amusing little incident about Charlotte, he interrupted
+her abruptly and irrelevantly:
+
+"I say,--you like that young man, eh?"
+
+"What young man?" gasped Nancy, turning scarlet.
+
+"_That_ young man," repeated Uncle Thomas, pettishly.  "Elizabeth's
+boy--Arnold--that author-person."
+
+"Author?"
+
+"Yes.  Bless me, didn't he tell you how famous he is?  Do you like him,
+I say?"  Uncle Thomas was quite fierce.
+
+"Why, yes.  I think he's awfully nice.  I--I don't know him very well,"
+said Nancy, in astonishment.
+
+"Hum.  Well, he's a nice fellow.  Clever chap.  Elizabeth dotes on him,
+but he doesn't let her think for him.  But he's not good enough for
+you.  You go along to college.  If you won't get any silly notions
+about marrying and all that nonsense, I--I'll--well, maybe I'll give
+you a lift here and there, though it's strictly against my principles."
+After which involved and very cryptic remark Uncle Thomas stiffly
+offered her his cheek to kiss, and sent her to bed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+ALMA MAKES COMPLICATIONS
+
+Charlotte was sitting in the easy chair which she had imported to her
+new lodging with the rest of her belongings, munching peanuts.  Her
+bushy brown hair was pinned up into a droll little "nubbin" on top of
+her head, her goggles had slipped down almost to the tip of her nose,
+and altogether her attitude, when Nancy burst in upon her late on
+Sunday afternoon, gave evidence that she was in a thoughtful mood.  She
+had often said that peanuts always disposed her to meditation.  With
+her feet on the window-seat she gazed out upon a rather dreary scene of
+fog and rain, hardly blinking her big, heavy-lidded eyes, and devouring
+peanuts like an automaton.  But the unchanging gravity of her face, as
+she turned around to greet her prodigal roommate, told Nancy that there
+was really some serious matter on her friend's mind.
+
+"Hello!  Have a good time?" was her only greeting.
+
+"Very.  Did you like the play yesterday?  I--I hope you understood why
+I--I mean after I had told you that I had to stay here----"
+
+"Nancy, you know you don't have to explain anything to me.  If you
+couldn't go with me, don't you suppose that I knew that you had your
+own reasons for not going?" interrupted Charlotte warmly.  "My idea of
+real 'bosom friends,' as they call 'em, is of two people who know when
+not to bother each other with questions.
+
+"The reason why most of these ardent school-girl friendships come to
+violent deaths is because they _will_ insist on telling each other
+everything, and demanding an explanation for every why and wherefore.
+And that's that.  Take off your things and have a peanut--or even two,
+if you like."
+
+Nancy tossed her hat on the bed and began to take off her heavy clothes.
+
+"You seemed sort of grave, Charlotte, when I came in.  Has anything
+happened?" she asked, as she slipped into her dressing-gown and shook
+down her hair.
+
+"Well, in a way, yes," replied Charlotte.  "Nothing to worry you
+really, and it's really not my affair, except that it concerns you and
+Alma.  It's only that I'm afraid that that donkey Mildred Lloyd got
+Alma into rather a scrape yesterday.  Oh, don't look so scared--it's
+all fixed up.  Only, if I were you, I'd have a good talk with Alma
+about Mildred."
+
+"But what happened?" cried Nancy, who had turned quite pale, in spite
+of Charlotte's hasty reassurances.
+
+"Well, the chief trouble was that they overstayed their time in town
+yesterday.  Ten o'clock is the very latest that any of us can come in
+on a holiday, As you know, and as they knew, and as that little
+pinhead, Mademoiselle, knew.  It seems that one of the boys persuaded
+them to stay in for dinner and to go to the theatre again afterwards.
+So they didn't get in until after twelve.  Well, as you can imagine,
+Amelia went on a regular rampage.  And I've a notion that she was a
+good deal harder on poor Alma than she was on Mildred.  Amelia is more
+afraid of angering Mildred than Mildred is of angering her.  Mildred
+always takes Mademoiselle as her chaperone because she is quite sure of
+being able to make that little poodle do anything she wants.  And
+Mildred, being the daughter of Marshall Lloyd, is _persona grata_ here,
+and can wriggle out of any scrape.  I know Mildred down to the ground.
+I've roomed with her for a year.  For some reason or other she never
+tried to coax me into any rule breaking--probably because we were never
+intimate at all, and because she knew that I don't think there's any
+fun or sense in that sort of thing.  It doesn't take any great
+cleverness to break a rule, and you don't get anything much by doing
+so.  If you want my opinion, I think that Mildred is a very unsafe sort
+of friend for a girl like Alma.  I don't believe that Alma honestly
+likes her--Mildred is more than inclined to be a bully, and extremely
+capricious--but somehow a lot of girls feel flattered when Mildred
+'takes them up,' and will do anything she tells them to, without using
+their own common sense for a minute.  I'm saying all this to you,
+Nancy, when I wouldn't say it to anyone else.  I don't like the idea of
+picking to pieces a girl whom you roomed with for a year, but I think
+that both of us ought to try to make Alma open her eyes before Mildred
+gets her into any more mischief."
+
+Nancy sat silent for a time, staring out of the window, and biting her
+finger thoughtfully.  She longed to ask Charlotte's advice, but she
+hesitated to discuss her own sister even with this very close and
+sincere friend.  She hated to admit Alma's weaknesses even to herself,
+and she could not bring herself to speak of them to anyone else.  But
+she felt very uncertain as to how she was going to approach Alma on the
+subject of her friendship with Mildred; for in spite of their
+reconciliation, she knew that Alma was not ready to take any warnings,
+without flying up with a lot of notions about the nobility of
+friendship and so on; true and idealistic notions in themselves, but so
+unwisely applied that she stood in danger of losing them altogether
+through disillusionment.
+
+"I think Alma's alone now.  Have you seen her?" said Charlotte.  "The
+poor little creature has been awfully unhappy about the scolding Miss
+Leland gave her--Mildred wasn't at all cast down and goes around
+looking as if she had done something very smart.  The very fact that
+Alma is feeling so blue about it all, while Mildred is perfectly
+unconcerned, shows the difference in the sort of stuff they are made
+of.  And we must take care that Alma doesn't change under Mildred's
+influence so that she, too, will think it very smart to get into silly
+scrapes just for the fun of getting out of them."
+
+Nancy sprang up, and without a word left the room.
+
+There was no light in her sister's room, but in the gray twilight that
+shone in forlornly she made out a pathetic little heap on the bed.  She
+felt a lump of pity and motherly tenderness rise in her throat; not a
+particle of blame was in her heart--only a desire to cuddle and comfort
+her thoughtless little sister.
+
+"Alma," she called softly.  A tousled head was lifted from the pillow,
+and even in the dim light she could see how Alma's rosy, childlike face
+was stained and swollen with tears.
+
+"Oh, Nancy!  I _am_ so glad you're back!  Oh, don't be angry with me.
+You aren't angry, are you?" sobbed Alma.
+
+"Angry!" echoed Nancy, laughing tremulously.  "Oh, you poor little
+darling--don't be so unhappy about it all."  She hugged Alma tightly
+and kissed her hot cheek, feeling the tears on it.
+
+"Then you _do_ know about it.  It wasn't my fault, Nancy--that is, it
+wasn't Milly's, either.  Don't think I'm trying to shift the blame.
+Oh, I have been so _miserable_."
+
+"Why, dearest, it wasn't anything very bad--it was only foolish.  Cheer
+up!"
+
+"You see,--you see--Frank was there, and another boy--and they hated to
+go back to Cambridge--and it all seemed perfectly harmless--and Milly
+said it was perfectly all right, and that Miss Leland wouldn't care a
+bit--and that she had often done it.  I hadn't any idea--until I
+thought about you, and I knew you wouldn't like it.  But I didn't think
+about that until we were coming home.  But Milly just laughed."
+
+"What did Miss Leland say to you?"
+
+"She--she was furious.  She said that she was ashamed of me, and that
+she was going to write to Mother--and that it was a cheap, common thing
+to do."
+
+Nancy's eyes blazed.  For a moment she sat perfectly still, breathing
+sharply, evidently trying to conquer her temper.  Then she said in a
+quiet tone:
+
+"She had no business to say that to you.  I'm going to speak to her
+after dinner."
+
+"Oh, don't, Nancy," implored Alma, timidly.  "It's all right now.  I--I
+don't want you to say anything to Miss Leland."
+
+"Well, she should have been ashamed of herself to say that to you.  She
+is nothing but a horrid old snob--I'll wager she thought twice over
+everything she said to Mildred."  Nancy's eyes were still fiery.  She
+was beginning to taste the humiliation of having to submit to the
+tyranny of snobs.  If she went to Miss Leland it would end most likely
+by their having, for the sake of their pride, to pack up and go home.
+And she felt that she had no right to do anything that would so wound
+her mother.
+
+"Alma, dearest, I want to say something to you--please don't you be
+angry with me now.  Please, dearest.  You know that I haven't a single
+thought that isn't for your interest--and that I wouldn't for anything
+on earth try to take away from you anything that was really for your
+good."  She paused, waiting for Alma to say something, but her sister
+was silent, and the room was too dim now for her to read the expression
+on Alma's face.
+
+"I think that you have already seen for yourself that there is danger
+in a friendship where one person lacks a--well, a very keen sense of
+honor, and the other lacks judgment.  I know you don't want to make any
+more mistakes--you have been very unhappy over a small one, and unless
+you are wise, big ones may follow."
+
+"You mean--you want me to--to not be friends with Mildred?"
+
+"I want you only to be independent, dear, so that you won't be afraid
+to do what you know is right and wise, even if she laughs at you and
+coaxes you.  I don't like to criticize Mildred to you if you are very
+fond of her; but you know that I have never trusted her, and this
+affair ought to show you, too, that she isn't to be trusted.  She has
+always had her own way, and she isn't a wise girl.  She hasn't been a
+very good influence for you, as you must have seen.  Partly because of
+her influence we quarrelled, you know.  She has laughed you out of
+doing many things that you know well you should have done.  I am not
+blaming you, Alma.  It is only because I know that in time Mildred
+would make you very, very unhappy that I'm telling you not to make her
+your closest friend."
+
+"She--she--I mean that in many ways she should be a very _good_ friend
+to have," began Alma, in a low voice.
+
+"Oh, Alma darling, you mustn't think that simply because a girl has
+money and position and influence that she is, on the face of that, a
+valuable friend.  A girl like Mildred is very fickle, anyway.  To-day
+she may want to do everything in the world for you, and to-morrow she
+may hardly speak to you.  So long as you follow her blindly, she may
+show a great fancy for you, but if you were to follow your own ideas,
+contrary to her, she would quarrel with you in a minute."
+
+"I don't believe that of Mildred," exclaimed Alma, with sudden
+defiance.  "You have no idea how generous she is, and--and how
+broad-minded.  I'm sure that you are prejudiced against her, Nancy.  I
+know that she often appears to be rather a snob, but in reality she
+isn't one at all.  Yesterday was no more her fault than it was mine.  I
+was just as wrong as she was."
+
+"Yes, but you were unhappy because you had done it, and Mildred isn't
+unhappy about it at all--as a matter of fact, she thinks that it was
+quite a clever thing to do."
+
+Alma was silent.  Then she said, presently:
+
+"I can't quarrel with her."
+
+"You don't have to quarrel with her.  I never asked you to do that.  I
+said only to think and act as you know to be right.  Certainly, then,
+if she grows cool with you, she will respect you more.  I--I hate to
+see my sister so absolutely a--a--I mean I hate to see you doing
+blindly everything Mildred does.  Because she thinks it silly and
+'high-brow' to study hard, you don't study.  I hate to see you so
+afraid to lose a friend that you will go against your own conscience
+and judgment just to keep her good-will.  It's just--snobbery,
+Alma--and it's worse than even Mildred's snobbery, because it's
+cowardly, while hers is just--impudent."
+
+"I won't let you say such things, Nancy," cried Alma, shaking off her
+sister's hand.  "I--I couldn't go on rooming with Mildred if I believed
+what you say of her, and I won't listen to you."
+
+"Oh, Alma--don't, _don't_ let us quarrel again," pleaded Nancy.  "Why
+can't you believe that it's almost unbearably hard for me to say these
+things to you?  I am a coward, too, because I'm so afraid of losing one
+little jot of your affection, that I would rather a thousand times hold
+my tongue than say anything to make you angry.  But I can't be silent."
+
+"You've made me more unhappy now than I was before," said Alma,
+sullenly.  "Do you want me to be a hypocrite, and pretend to be fond of
+Mildred still, while I'm believing what you want me to believe of her?"
+
+Nancy got up, feeling quite desperate about the failure of her attempts
+to show Alma her danger.  While she was thinking of something to say
+she walked over to the door and switched on the light.  Just as she
+turned, she saw Alma make a quick movement--but Alma was not quick
+enough to grasp a handsome fur neck-piece off the chair and whisk it
+behind the pillow before Nancy saw her.  Alma blushed crimson.  If it
+had not been for that swift action and the guilty blush, Nancy would
+not even have noticed the scarf--or, if she had, she would simply have
+thought that it was one of Mildred's.  For some reason she flushed
+herself, and Stood staring blankly at Alma, curiously ashamed of Alma's
+own guilty expression.  Then Alma slowly drew the scarf from its
+hiding-place, and tried to laugh.
+
+"You're going to scold me for my extravagance now, Nancy.  I--I got
+this to-day.  I was hiding it, because I didn't--I mean I was afraid
+you might read me a lecture."  She attempted an air of playful
+penitence, but it was rather a failure.  It was a very expensive fur,
+long and fluffy, and beautifully lined with frilled chiffon.
+
+"But--Alma," remonstrated Nancy, weakly, "how did you get it?  It must
+have cost at least a hundred dollars.  Why----"  She broke off quite
+dazed and frightened at the thought of such a sum, and stared at her
+sister as if she thought that Alma had taken leave of her senses.
+
+"Well, you see--don't worry, Nancy," stammered Alma, evidently finding
+the greatest difficulty in explaining.  "You see--it was this way.
+Milly--oh, Nancy,"--she stopped and looked at her sister
+beseechingly,--"Milly wanted me to get it.  And she offered to lend me
+the money--she begged me to let her lend it to me, and I can pay her
+back whenever I please; she said she didn't care whether I paid her
+back at all.  And I felt so shabby in that old suit of mine, and I
+hated to look badly when Frank was going to be there--he knows ever so
+much about girls' clothes, and I _did_ look positively poor beside
+Mildred.  I knew Mother wouldn't mind--in fact, I knew that it would
+hurt her pride dreadfully if I didn't look respectable with those sort
+of people--and the fur made everything else look just right.  Oh,
+Nancy, if you only knew how it _hurts_ me to be with girls who have
+everything, who look so much nicer than I do just because they have
+prettier clothes.  I know it was wrong of me, but _I couldn't resist
+it_!  I just simply couldn't."
+
+Nancy bit her lip.  It seemed as if she were always being thrust into a
+position where she must needs be forever preaching to Alma.  It made
+her feel old, and uncomfortably burdened.  With Alma she always felt
+somewhat as a staid and wise old duenna must feel with a pretty and
+charmingly unpractical and mischievous charge.  For a moment she was on
+the point of shrugging her shoulders and determining to let Alma go
+ahead as she pleased.  She had no desire to blame Alma; she understood
+too well the force of the temptations that surrounded a girl like Alma
+in such an environment as Miss Leland's school; and she was touched by
+Alma's, "If you knew how it _hurts_ me!"  She had foreseen just that
+when she had urged her mother not to send them to Miss Leland's.  She
+herself had felt that very same sharp flick of wounded feminine pride
+when she compared her own small possessions with those of the other
+girls and realized that in spite of the neatness of her clothes they
+must often appear plain to the point of poorness in comparison with
+Mildred's or Kay's.  Somehow with Charlotte, in spite of Charlotte's
+pretty things, she had not been so conscious of the contrast.
+
+"I--I wish you hadn't tried to hide it from me, Alma," she said gently.
+"Are you _afraid_ of me?  Am I always scolding you?"
+
+"Nancy!  Of course not," cried Alma, in distress.  "I didn't mean to
+hide it--that was horribly cowardly--I _knew_ that it was weak of me to
+get it, and that I had no right to borrow the money from Mildred; and
+you have a perfect right to blame me awfully."
+
+"But, dear, however are we going to manage to pay her back?  How much
+was it?"
+
+Alma looked uncomfortable.
+
+"It really was a bargain, Nancy.  A--a hundred and ten, marked down
+from a hundred and forty.  It'll last me forever."
+
+"A hundred and ten!" Nancy gasped, and then tried to compose her
+features so as not to scare Alma with her own breathless dismay.
+
+"I--I don't have to pay her until I get ready," murmured Alma.  "I know
+Milly won't even think of it again."
+
+"You can't possibly accept it as a present, Alma," said Nancy sternly.
+"We must manage to pay Mildred back somehow--soon.  She is the last
+person in the world whom I'd want to owe anything to.  I mean to say,
+that people in our position _can't_ put themselves under obligations to
+a girl like Mildred Lloyd.  It's different if you can return it in some
+other way.  For instance, it would be all right for Kay Leonard to
+accept an expensive present from Mildred, because she could so easily
+return it, but for one of us to is like accepting a charity."
+
+Alma looked at her repentantly out of two large, grave blue eyes.
+
+"I--I'm afraid I rather made a mess of everything yesterday, Nancy,"
+she said, hanging her head and picking at the soft fur, which somehow
+had lost a good deal of its charm for her; then, all at once, evidently
+touched by the droll naivete of the sad remark, Nancy burst out
+laughing.
+
+"You poor, funny lamb!  I'm always worrying you to death," she said.
+"Don't bother any more, Alma.  I'm sick of bothering, myself.  We'll
+manage to solve the problem somehow.  Only, dearest," she grew sober
+again, "please--please don't--I don't want to say it again,--but think
+over what I said to you.  I'm sure that you will see that I'm very
+nearly right.  Come, now--you'd better tidy yourself.  I'm going to
+dress."  She bent over Alma and kissed her lightly.  As she went toward
+the door Mildred met her.  They looked at each other coolly, Mildred
+barely giving her a nonchalant nod, and then ignoring her altogether.
+
+"Hello, honey-pie.  Don't tell me you've been weeping briny tears all
+afternoon over what Leland said to you," she cried gaily to Alma.
+"Goodness, what a penitent!  What's the point in having a good time if
+you're going to regret it like that?  I have the right idea--I make it
+a point never to regret anything."
+
+Nancy walked slowly back to her own room, and dressed for dinner in
+silence.  It seemed to her that she might indeed be "sick of
+bothering," but that did not prevent there being a good deal for her to
+bother about.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+ALMA IN A SCRAPE
+
+It was the custom of Miss Leland's school to hold the mid-year
+examinations before the Christmas holidays, early in December, so that
+the teachers and the girls might enjoy their holidays without the
+shadow of that depressing necessity hanging over them, and so that they
+might apply themselves to the preparation for them while they were
+still in the habit of studying.  Miss Leland held the opinion that
+after the gay indolence of the holiday season, and when the girls were
+still in the state of homesickness and lassitude following their return
+to school, they were much less interested in making good marks, and
+much less capable of applying themselves.
+
+Thus, the first week of a snowy December found the entire school in
+that state of tension which seizes any body of young people when a
+hostile body of older people is bent upon finding out how much they
+know.
+
+"History from nine to twelve to-morrow," groaned Charlotte.  "I've
+reread the whole volume.  I've crammed dates until I don't know whether
+Columbus discovered America in 1492 or 1776.  I've 'rastled' with Free
+Silver, and I haven't the faintest notion what the trouble was about.
+A long, long time ago I knew whether Maryland was a Charter colony or
+not, but now I never expect to know again.  I could write everything I
+know about this great and glorious country in two minutes, and it would
+be quite wrong at that, and the thought that we are expected to know
+enough to require three solid hours for writing it out is driving me
+rapidly into a state of chronic melancholia."
+
+"What happened in 1812, Charlotte?" demanded Nancy in a dazed voice.
+"Something happened then, but I don't know what."
+
+"Why, that was the year that Washington said 'Beyond the Alps lies
+Italy.'  Which was quite true.  And even if he didn't say it then, it
+would have been true, so you can't go far wrong there," replied
+Charlotte.  "Nancy, kindly fold up your book.  I am going to flunk, and
+I won't have you pass.  If you try to study any more I'm going to sing
+the Marseillaise at the top of my voice."
+
+"I think I _will_ stop.  I really do know my history, but I'm
+forgetting it the more I try to study."
+
+After dinner that night, the living-room was empty during the usual
+hour for recreation, nearly all the girls having gone to their room
+either to study, or simply as a matter of form, since it was considered
+highly undiplomatic, to say the least, to appear as if you were so sure
+of the outcome of your examinations that you felt privileged to take
+life easily.
+
+What they did, once they were in the privacy of their own rooms, was,
+of course, strictly their own business.  Two or three, who believed
+that rest was essential, had solemnly gone to bed.  A dozen or even
+more of the seriously inclined had hung "Busy" signs on the panel of
+their doors, through the transoms of which the greenish illumination of
+the students' lamps burning within told their own story.  The others,
+philosophically believing that if they were going to pass they would,
+and if they were destined to flunk they would do so in spite of the
+best-intentioned efforts at study, were cheerfully whiling away the two
+hours of grace in subdued revelry.
+
+Alma, who had every reason to doubt that she would shine in her
+examinations unless she made a superhuman effort at cramming, and who,
+at the same time, was unable to comfort herself with Mildred's
+philosophical indifference, was curled up on her bed, her fingers in
+her ears, struggling to make the lines she read convey some sense to
+her weary brain.
+
+"I say, Milly, will you ask me some questions?" she suggested at
+length, lifting a weary face from her book.  "I don't know _what_ I
+know."
+
+"Oh, bother!  Don't study any more.  What does it matter even if you
+don't pass?" said Mildred.  "For goodness' sake don't you turn into a
+grind like Nancy.  One thing I refuse to do is to room with anyone
+who's studious."
+
+"But I'll flunk, as sure as fate," objected Alma, "and--and I don't
+want to, Milly."
+
+"You're a bit late finding that out.  It's not going to do you a bit of
+good to stuff now."
+
+"Don't your father and mother mind if you don't pass?"
+
+"Oh, Mother doesn't care a bit.  She is always worrying herself to
+death for fear I'm overstudying.  Dad sometimes rows at me about my bad
+marks, but Mother always takes my part.  Besides this is my last year
+of school, and what earthly good will Latin or Algebra do me when I
+come out?"
+
+"I suppose they really aren't much use," agreed Alma, finding this a
+very comforting notion.  "Of course, it's different with Nancy; she
+wants to go to college."
+
+"Well, of course if one wants to be a school teacher," said Mildred
+with a very faint sneer.  "But that's a ridiculous idea for anyone
+who's as pretty as you are."
+
+Alma hesitated; she felt the slight cast on Nancy in Mildred's remark,
+but she was afraid to resent it, and told herself that she would not be
+justified in doing so.  She was silent for a moment, wondering why she
+liked Mildred, when Mildred did not like Nancy.  Perhaps,--she was
+unwilling to admit this supposition, but it formed itself hazily in her
+mind--perhaps she herself did not _really_ like Mildred.  Perhaps way
+down inside of her she shared her sister's distrust of the girl.  But
+why didn't she admit it?  Because she was flattered with being the
+chosen friend of the most important girl in the school?  Because she
+had accepted favors from Mildred?  She blushed involuntarily as these
+thoughts glided through her mind.
+
+She did not want to quarrel with Mildred, even when she knew that she
+was right and her roommate in the wrong, because she hoped that Mildred
+would invite her to visit her, and that through Mildred she might have
+some good times.  She wished that Mildred wouldn't make mean little
+remarks about Nancy, because she felt ashamed of herself for not openly
+resenting them.
+
+At length, however, she threw aside her book, and lent her rapt
+attention to Mildred's chatter about the coming holidays.  In a little
+while other girls joined them, and the next hour of gossip drove away
+her uneasiness for the coming day, and her uncomfortable reflections.
+
+The last examination which was in Latin ended on Friday at noon.  On
+the Wednesday of the following week the reports had been posted on the
+bulletin-board, and at the eleven o'clock recess some twenty girls were
+clustered around them struggling to get near enough to read their
+marks.  Those who were closest called out the percentages to the others
+who pelted them with agitated questions.
+
+"You got seventy-six in French, Denise.  Good enough.  Good heavens,
+Nancy Prescott, you made _ninety-two_ in history, and Charlotte Spencer
+_ninety-four_.  Ye gods and little fishes, I passed my
+Algebra--sixty-eight!  Catch me, somebody; I'm going to faint."
+
+"Kay Leonard flunked everything but her French," whispered another.
+"Well, it won't disturb her at all.  What did I make in Latin?"
+
+"Eighty-eight.  Good for you.  Drinkwater doesn't make anyone a present
+of her marks.  I just scraped through.  I say, Alma!  Alma Prescott,
+what happened to you on your Latin?"
+
+"Why?" asked Alma, peering over Allison's shoulder, and turning a
+little pale.  "Did--did I flunk very badly?"
+
+"Why, it just says 'Cancelled' after your name.  Didn't you take your
+exam?"
+
+"Of course I took it!"
+
+"Well, there--you can see for yourself.  It just has 'Cancelled.'"
+
+A queer silence fell upon the chattering group of girls and for several
+dreadful moments every eye was turned on Alma, who, white as a sheet,
+was staring blankly at the uncompromising word written after her name.
+
+"I--I can't understand," she said presently, in a scared, voice.  "I
+_did_ take the examination--and I thought I really got through.  I
+can't understand.  Why should it be cancelled?"  She turned her big,
+frightened eyes to Nancy, who, as pale as she was, only stared back at
+her.
+
+"Why should my examination be cancelled?" repeated Alma, dazedly.  "Was
+anyone else's cancelled too?"
+
+"No.  One, two, six girls flunked--and--for goodness' _sake_--Mildred
+Lloyd made the highest mark, Ninety-three!  Mildred Lloyd, come here,
+and get your medal!  Congratulations!"
+
+Mildred strolled up nonchalantly, glanced at the board and turned away;
+only Nancy followed her curiously with her eyes.  Then she turned to
+Alma.
+
+"Haven't you any idea why your examination was cancelled?" she asked,
+in an odd voice that sounded as if her throat was dry.  Alma shook her
+head.
+
+"It's very strange.  Come and let's ask Miss Drinkwater.  Maybe it's
+only that your paper was lost or something like that."  She tried to
+sound comforting, but she had no faith in her suggestion.  Just then,
+however, the bell rang, and the girls had to go to their desks.  Miss
+Leland took her place at one end of the room and stood waiting for
+silence.  Everyone felt that she was there to make some important
+announcement and her grave, cold expression led all of them to suspect
+that it was not an entirely pleasant one.
+
+She waited a moment after the room was silent.  Alma looked piteously
+at Nancy, with a glance that said, "She's going to say something about
+me."  Nancy kept her eyes fixedly on Miss Leland.  Her lips were
+pressed together tightly, and her hands had grown as cold and damp as
+though she had just taken them out of ice-water.  Her heart was beating
+so heavily that the frill on her shirt-waist trembled.
+
+Miss Leland took a step forward, straightened a book on the big desk,
+and then looked up.
+
+"Girls, for the first time in the history of this school, I am
+compelled to make an announcement that is as great a humiliation to me
+as it must be to you," she said, in a quiet, even voice.
+
+"Ever since this school was founded there has never until now been any
+occasion when I have been forced to doubt the honor of one of my
+pupils."  She made another pause, and in that silence an electric
+thrill seemed to pass through each one of the girls; some of them
+flushed scarlet and others went white, as though each one felt in a
+hazy way some share in the guilt of the unnamed culprit.
+
+"For the first time in eighteen years one of my teachers has had to
+bring to my attention the fact that a pupil of this school attempted to
+_cheat_ in an examination.  That examination has, of course, been
+cancelled, so that that girl's attempt to win a high mark,
+_dishonestly_, availed her nothing.
+
+"I do not need, I am sure, to incite in you feelings of disgust and
+shame for that girl's action.  Your own sense of honor makes any
+warnings on my part superfluous and insulting to you.
+
+"Fortunately, the imposition was discovered, because that girl most
+unwisely left the interlinear translation of Virgil's AEneid, which she
+had used to assist her in the examination, on her desk, where it was
+found, and brought to me.
+
+"I do not choose to announce the name of that girl, much as she merits
+the public disgrace.  I shall speak to her privately, and if she can
+offer, which is not likely, any defense of her action, I may soften her
+punishment.  Otherwise, I have no choice left to me than to expel her
+from a school which she has disgraced.  Now, you may go to your
+class-rooms."
+
+The girls rose in silence, and hardly knowing what they were doing,
+began feverishly to collect their books and papers.  But neither Alma
+nor Nancy moved.  In a few moments the assembly hall was empty, save
+for the two sisters, neither of whom seemed to have been conscious of
+the curious glances cast at them by the other girls as they went out.
+
+When they were alone, Nancy got up and went over to Alma, who sat as if
+she had been turned to stone, with a face as white as chalk.
+
+"Alma, of course I know you didn't do it," said Nancy, laying her hand
+on her sister's, and speaking in a gentle, trembling voice.
+
+"Oh, Nancy, it's so horrible--it's so horrible," moaned Alma.  "I don't
+know how all this could have happened.  What shall I do, Nancy?  What
+in the world shall I do?"
+
+"Come, dearest, let's go up-stairs," coaxed Nancy.  "It'll come out all
+right.  Come, dear."
+
+"Of course, now everyone knows that Miss Leland meant me," said Alma,
+dully.  "Am I going to be expelled; Nancy?  I can't stand it--I won't
+stand it.  Come on, Nancy, let's get our things and go home."
+
+"Alma, darling, you _didn't_ do it?" cried Nancy, the very shadow of
+such a doubt making her feel faint and ill.  Alma lifted a wan face and
+smiled.
+
+"I don't _know_ that I didn't do it," she said, drearily.  "If they
+found a trot on my desk--and it must have been my desk, because mine
+was the only examination that was cancelled--why, how can I prove that
+I wasn't using it?"
+
+"But you don't even own such a thing!  You wouldn't dream of having
+one.  In some schools girls are allowed to use interlinear translations
+for their daily work, but it's not permitted here, and it wouldn't have
+entered your mind to get one.  Come, we'll go to Miss Leland at once.
+She's alone in her office now."
+
+Alma let herself be guided up to the principal's cosy little sanctum,
+where Miss Leland was seated at her desk writing.  A wood-fire
+smoldered with friendly warmth on the brightly burnished andirons, and
+a clear, wintry sunlight fell in through the curtained windows, where a
+perfect garden of indoor plants bloomed gaily.  But all these pleasant,
+homelike things seemed to share the chill hostility of Miss Leland's
+level glance, as the two sisters stood looking at her timidly from the
+threshold of the open door.
+
+"You may come in," she said, with a curt nod.  "No doubt, Alma, you
+wish to offer some explanation.  Be seated."
+
+"My sister wanted to say that there was a mistake.  The book you
+referred to was never in her possession, and she did not use it at her
+examination," said Nancy, speaking rapidly, and almost harshly, in her
+endeavor to keep from breaking into a fit of hysterical tears.  Alma
+was quite incapable of saying a word for herself.
+
+"Then I am sorry that it happened to be found on her desk just after
+she had left the examination-room," replied Miss Leland dryly, her tone
+expressing her complete lack of belief in Nancy's words.
+
+"Alma, did you have that book?" asked Nancy, turning sharply to her
+sister.  Miss Leland opened a drawer of her writing-table and took out
+a small volume, bound in green cloth, which she handed over to Alma.
+Alma had already opened her lips to utter a frantic denial to Nancy's
+question, when her eyes fell upon the book.  She shut her mouth with a
+sudden gasp, and without taking it, simply stared at the inoffensive
+little volume with a fixed, horrified gaze.
+
+"Is that an interlinear?" she exclaimed breathlessly.  "Is that the
+book that was found on my desk?"
+
+"So you _have_ seen it before," remarked Miss Leland.  "Alma, this is a
+very serious matter.  There can be no excuse for a girl's making use of
+any text-book whatever at an examination.  A failure is to be deplored,
+but it is not a disgrace--and it is to be very much regretted that you
+did not choose rather to run the risk of an honorable failure than to
+attempt to steal a good mark, I have no choice in the matter.  I am
+very sorry that I had to speak of it before the school, but I had to
+make a public example of the girl who could stoop to such an act.  You
+understand, of course, that it will be impossible for you to continue
+as a pupil in this school."
+
+For some reason Alma had grown quite calm, and when Miss Leland had
+finished speaking, instead of appearing to be overcome by the grim
+meaning in the last words, she rose quietly.
+
+"Of course, if you cannot take my word for it that I never looked
+inside that book or anything like it in my whole life, why there is no
+use in my saying anything more," she said, with the utmost
+self-possession.  "I don't know how it came to be on my desk----"
+
+"Alma, I am anxious to believe a girl is innocent until she is proved
+guilty," said Miss Leland, impressed by Alma's coolness, "only--you
+_have_ seen this volume before?"  She looked at the girl with a still
+doubtful and puzzled expression.
+
+Alma hesitated a moment before she admitted slowly:
+
+"Yes, I have seen it, Miss Leland.  But I never knew what it was."
+
+"You have seen it in the possession of some girl in this school?"
+
+"That I can't answer," replied Alma, with a firmness that Nancy had
+never seen in her before.  "I--I don't think you have a right to ask me
+any more questions, Miss Leland.  If--if you just let the whole
+business go, I'm perfectly willing to--to bear the blame.  Please don't
+ask me any more questions.  Let it be as it is.  Just as long as Nancy
+is satisfied that I never did that hateful thing, why, I don't mind,
+you know."
+
+The two sisters looked at each other happily, each of them sincerely
+indifferent as to whether anyone else in the school believed Alma
+innocent or guilty.
+
+"Come on, Nancy," said Alma, almost gaily.  They had started to leave
+the room, when Miss Leland called them back.
+
+"I am very anxious to believe in you, Alma.  If there has been a
+mistake, be assured that it will be set right.  I will tell the other
+girls at luncheon that--well, I must see.  I am in a difficult
+position.  You may both go now.  I would advise you to go directly to
+your classes."
+
+Nancy was curiously absent-minded as they made their way down-stairs,
+hand in hand.  Then all at once she drew in her breath sharply,
+catching her under lip between her teeth.  On the bottom step she
+stopped short and, putting her hands on Alma's shoulder, swung her
+about so that she could look into her eyes.  Her own were very bright.
+
+"What is it?" asked Alma; then, for some reason, she colored and turned
+her eyes away.
+
+"I know now where I saw that book myself, Alma," said Nancy.
+
+"Nancy!"  Alma's blue eyes now suddenly filled with tears.  "Oh,
+Nancy--you won't say anything.  No, no, you didn't see it.  Please
+don't believe that of her."
+
+"Two Sundays ago when I was talking to you--I noticed it in the
+bookcase in your room.  I kept reading the titles on the books when
+I--you know the way you do when you're worried.  It stood between a
+copy of 'Bryce's Commonwealth' and a French grammar----"
+
+"Nancy, you mustn't say anything, do you hear?" insisted Alma,
+beseechingly.
+
+"I won't say anything.  But--but I'm going to--you go on to class.  I
+tell you, I won't say anything.  Oh, Alma, you darling!  Go on to
+class, I say."
+
+"Nancy, what are you going to do?" demanded Alma, as Nancy broke away
+from her and ran up the stairs again.  "You aren't going to Miss
+Leland?"
+
+"No, I'm not.  There, isn't that the postman?  You might as well see if
+there's anything for us before you go to French."
+
+Alma walked down the hall toward the front door, where the maid was
+taking the noon mail from the postman.  Nancy stood waiting, half-way
+up the stairs, evidently lost in thoughts which were not very pleasant,
+for her brown eyes sparkled with suppressed indignation and contempt,
+and once or twice she pressed her lips together tightly, as she always
+did when she was trying to make herself look calmer than she felt.
+
+"Here's a letter from Mother," said Alma, coming back with an envelope
+in her hand.  "I can't read it now, so you take it and save it for me."
+Nancy leaned over and took it from her.
+
+"I--I may not see you until to-night," she said, slipping the letter
+into the pocket of her skirt.  "You know you can trust me to hold my
+tongue, well--quite as well as she can, and she holds hers very well
+indeed.  Do you mind being stared at and whispered about?"
+
+Alma only smiled, then, with a little toss of her head, made a right
+about face, marched off, chin up, to brave the battery of glancing eyes
+and whispering tongues alone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+NANCY HAS A GREAT ADVENTURE
+
+There was no doubt whatever in Nancy's mind that it was Mildred who had
+cheated in the examination.  But whether Mildred had deliberately left
+the book on Alma's desk, or whether she had simply forgotten it, she
+did not know.  The fact remained, however, that so far Mildred had made
+no effort to clear Alma of the suspicion, and knowing Mildred's nature
+as she did, Nancy was not inclined to think that Mildred would ever do
+so of her own accord.  Nancy was willing to give her the benefit of the
+doubt so far as believing that she had not intentionally thrown Alma
+into such a damaging position.  In the first place, she had no motive
+for injuring Alma, and in the second place, she ran a very great risk
+of discovery herself.  Leaving the whys and wherefores, Nancy regarded
+the simple fact; that having thus injured Alma, Mildred was not going
+to try to clear her, and pay the penalty herself.  The thought that
+most wounded Nancy was that Alma was under obligations to the girl who
+had treated her so badly.  The handsome fur neck-piece Mildred had
+"lent" her, was not yet paid for, and Nancy shrank from the idea of her
+sister's owing money to her.  She had, of course, not mentioned this to
+Alma, although it had been the first thought that sprang into her own
+head, when she first became certain that Mildred was the culprit.  It
+would have troubled Alma, who was already troubled enough, and she
+could have done nothing about it.
+
+"I've got to get that money somehow," Nancy said to herself grimly.  "I
+can write to Mother for part of it--about half, perhaps, but the other
+half I've got to get myself."  Naturally, her first idea was to pocket
+her pride, and to ask her Uncle Thomas for the money.  Not even that
+would hurt her so much as the thought of owing it to Mildred; but then
+she dismissed this plan from her mind.  It was impossible; it would be
+a breach of their terms of friendship, for one thing, and for another,
+she felt that to explain to him her reasons for wanting it would be
+unjust to Alma.
+
+While she was turning one plan after another over in her mind, she
+absently took her mother's letter from her pocket, and slit the
+envelope open with a hairpin.  She glanced almost carelessly at the
+lines, written in Mrs. Prescott's pointed, flourishing hand, then all
+at once the meaning of the first sentence fixed her wandering attention.
+
+
+"MY DARLING, DARLING LITTLE DAUGHTERS:
+
+"I can hardly bring myself to write this letter.  You don't know how
+hard it is for me--but I deserve the pain and humiliation.  I am a very
+foolish woman, but, oh, my dears, I have made my mistakes only in
+trying to help you both.  And now, what _have_ I done to you?  There
+was no one to advise me, and I know nothing whatever about business,
+but it seemed so perfectly practical, so absolutely _sure_."
+
+
+All this was perfect Greek to Nancy, and she saw that her poor mother
+had evidently written the letter in an almost desperate state of mind.
+After two pages of self-reproach, it was gradually made clear to Nancy
+that Mrs. Prescott had made an unfortunate investment of her little
+capital, though the extent of the loss Mrs. Prescott did not explain.
+In an effort to increase their meagre income, she had taken all her
+money, or part of it, and bought stock in some oil interest in Texas.
+A Western promoter had assured her that it was the opportunity of a
+lifetime, he himself being either an unconscionable fraud or a
+self-deceiving optimist.  Nancy had not the remotest idea when her
+mother had made the investment, but evidently the news of its complete
+failure had just reached her, and it was equally evident that it had
+been a total loss.
+
+Utter bewilderment confused Nancy's thoughts, so that at first she
+could hardly realize all that the misfortune might mean; she felt no
+terror; only a wave of pity and tenderness for her mother, whose misery
+was so pitifully expressed in the letter.  Then she thought of Alma.
+Misfortune of that kind would hit both of them harder than herself,
+because they had a greater need for luxury and pleasure than she.
+There was nothing terrible to her in the thought of work, and of
+difficulties to be overcome, because, in her quiet way, she had a great
+wealth of self-confidence, the ardent ambition of youth, and that zest
+for struggle which is characteristic of strong natures.  Alma and her
+mother, on the other hand, saw nothing but the wretchedness of thwarted
+hopes in such an existence of poverty and work.  They were created for
+ease and luxury, just as the hollyhock is made to bloom against the
+sunny garden wall.  Poor Mrs. Prescott, who had dreamed such happy
+fairy tales for her daughters, and who, with her own hands, as it were,
+had so innocently destroyed the little they possessed; and Alma, so
+thirsty for pleasure and beauty,--it was only on their account that
+Nancy suffered.  She understood that it would be impossible for herself
+and Alma to come back to school for the next term; but that would have
+been impossible anyway, Nancy thought, even with Alma cleared of the
+dreadful suspicion that rested on her; for Nancy's stiff pride could
+not brook the thought of living among people who had doubted her
+sister, even though the circumstantial evidence against Alma had been
+very strong.
+
+"However shall I get all the money to pay Alma's debt now?" she
+thought, dazedly.  "I can't get even half of it from Mother, because
+she would certainly deny herself the very necessities of life to send
+it.  I _cannot_ ask Uncle Thomas for it."  She knew that in all
+probability she could influence Mr. Prescott, through his increasing
+affection for her, to help her mother out of their present difficulty,
+but the thought of doing so was utterly repugnant to her, and, it
+seemed to her, intolerably humiliating both for Mrs. Prescott and Alma.
+She was afraid that Mrs. Prescott, learning that Uncle Thomas had shown
+a favoritism for her, might urge her to this course, and she could not
+decide whether she should swallow her pride for her mother's sake and
+for Alma's, or whether she should insist that they fight their way
+courageously out of the difficulty.  So far as she herself was
+concerned, there would have been no question; there was nothing that
+she would not endure rather than ask her uncle for a cent.
+
+Her hands were trembling as she folded the letter up, and put it in her
+bureau drawer under her handkerchief case.
+
+"How am I going to tell Alma?"  Well, she would break the news
+to-night.  First of all, she must solve the problem of the debt to
+Mildred, Only one course was possible.  There was her father's ring,
+which she always kept, and which was her very dearest, possession.  It
+was of the heaviest gold, and set with a large seal stone of
+lapiz-lazuli.  She might raise perhaps thirty-five or forty dollars on
+it--which left about seventy still to be found by hook or crook.  Never
+had any sum appeared so gigantic to Nancy.  She could see no other
+possible means of getting it than by borrowing it temporarily from
+Charlotte, and paying it back by one way or another during the
+holidays.  She knew that Charlotte would be glad to lend it to her, but
+she shrank from the thought of putting their friendship to such a use.
+However, there was no help for it.  In Alma's pocketbook she found
+enough money to pay her way into the city.  Her mother would certainly
+be sending them a little more in a day or two for their return home.
+She took the money--two or three dollars, left from the ten which Alma
+had borrowed from her,--and began to change into her suit, thinking,
+meanwhile, with a smile of incredulity, of the imprudence of sending
+herself and Alma to one of the very schools where their poverty would
+be contrasted with the abundance of Mildred Lloyds and Katherine
+Leonards.
+
+When she was ready for town, she went to Miss Leland's office, and told
+her simply that she had just received a letter from her mother which
+made it necessary to go to the city without delay.  Miss Leland gave
+the consent, which Nancy, in her excited state of mind, was ready to go
+with or without.  She caught the next train to New York, and by
+one-thirty was in the Grand Central Station, wondering where on earth,
+now that she was there, she would be able to get the money on the ring.
+She had a vague idea that the only possible place would be some
+pawn-shop, and she had read in Nicholas Nickleby that one can tell a
+pawn-shop by three golden balls hanging in front of it, and also that
+one would be likely to find it only in a squalid section of the
+business district.  The dealer would certainly be Jewish, and he would
+in all probability not give her a tenth of what the ring was worth.
+None of these thoughts were likely to raise her spirits at all, and,
+when at length she found herself outside a dirty little shop on lower
+Sixth Avenue, gazing in upon a window display of dusty violins and
+guitars, travelling bags and tawdry jewelry, while above her the
+traditional golden balls creaked in a sharp wind, her courage all but
+failed her.  She was frankly terrified by the sordid strangeness of her
+environment, by the dirty, sodden loafers that shuffled past her, and
+by the thought of haggling for money over the counter of that dingy and
+even sinister-looking little shop.  At length, however, she plucked up
+courage and, with her heart in her throat, entered.
+
+The front part of the shop was empty and very dark.  At the back was a
+swinging door, leading into another room, from which issued the sound
+of voices of two men.  The little bell over the front door had rung as
+Nancy entered, to apprise the shopkeeper of a customer, and under the
+swinging door she saw a pair of shuffling feet moving toward it.  The
+shopkeeper emerged, followed by the other man, who was evidently a
+customer come to make a purchase of some antique piece; for the
+pawnbroker seemed to deal in old bric-a-brac and what not, besides his
+regular historic business of money-lending.
+
+"I vill gif you dat box for vun hundert dollars,--mit dat it iss a
+gift," the shopkeeper was saying doggedly, as he came toward Nancy, and
+the other man, following him, laughed.
+
+"Well, you certainly give awfully expensive presents," he remarked.  "A
+hundred dollars, you old rascal--no one on earth would give that for a
+little box."
+
+"Vell, only try to duplicate it--you vill not find such a handsome
+piece dis side de ocean," returned the shopkeeper with a shrug.  "Vot
+can I do for you, young lady?"
+
+But Nancy had temporarily lost all power of speech.  She was not sure,
+indeed, that she wasn't dreaming--it was all so utterly strange, and
+whimsical, and impossible, that surely it could be so only in a dream.
+For the young man who had followed the pawnbroker out of the inner room
+was George Arnold!  She was standing with her back to the door, but the
+light that came through the dirty glass shone squarely on his face, so
+that if she had not already recognized his voice she would have
+recognized his features beyond the shadow of a doubt.  Her first
+impulse was to turn and fly, or to conceal herself hastily in one of
+the odd little sentry boxes, which were evidently designed to preserve
+the incognito of the pawnbroker's indigent customers.  But already Mr.
+Arnold had cast a second curious glance at the unusual sight of a
+well-dressed, well-bred young girl in such surroundings, and with that
+second glance he had recognized her.  His mouth opened slightly in a
+repressed gasp of astonishment.  Probably, with a moment's thought, he
+might have pretended that he had not recognized her, in order to spare
+her any embarrassment, but he had already exclaimed, involuntarily:
+
+"Why, Miss Prescott!" and had taken a step toward her.  Nancy turned
+scarlet, and could only gaze at him helplessly.
+
+"How can I serve you, young lady?" repeated the shopkeeper.  Nancy
+hesitated, in a perfect agony of embarrassment, while Mr. Arnold
+continued to look at her, evidently very much at a loss.  On the one
+hand, he disliked to discomfit her by being present while she
+transacted her business with old Zeigler, the pawnbroker, and on the
+other, he was equally unwilling to leave her to be swindled, as she
+very probably would be.  Furthermore, while he realized that he had no
+business to inquire into her affairs, and that, to say the least, it
+would be the height of bad taste to do so, nevertheless he felt that
+she was in some difficulty and needed advice.  The squalid little shop
+was an odd place in which to find the niece of old Thomas Prescott; for
+it was not likely that she had come there as he had, to browse around
+in a dilettante search for curios.
+
+Nancy read the question, "What are you here for?" in his face, and
+guessed his indecision.  On her part she wished fervently that he would
+go, and was racking her brains for some excuse to leave the shop and to
+come back later.  But her frantic efforts at evolving some plan of
+escape within the space of fifteen seconds were fruitless.  Zeigler for
+the third time repeated his question to her with a touch of impatience.
+Then Mr. Arnold desperately took the bull by the horns, and with a
+touch of pretended gaiety asked with a laugh:
+
+"Are you in search of adventure?  You aren't running away from school,
+are you?"
+
+"No--that is----" stammered Nancy; then, driven to take him into her
+confidence to some extent, and trying to put her situation in the light
+of a prank, she laughed mischievously, and added with an air of candor,
+"You've caught me."
+
+"What are you up to, young lady?  Selling the family plate?" inquired
+Mr. Arnold boldly, and speaking to her as if she were a mischievous
+youngster, though his eyes were grave and puzzled.  Nancy put up her
+chin, as if she were being scolded, and answered with a touch of
+childish defiance: "Don't tell on me."
+
+"Well, I won't--though you deserve it, ma'am," replied Mr. Arnold.  "I
+won't--on one condition,--that you come with me, and 'fess up to all
+your misdemeanors, and let me give you the sage advice of a hardened
+sinner before you do anything rash.  I realize that I'm taking a
+liberty, Miss Prescott, in concerning myself in what is strictly your
+own affair," he added seriously, "but isn't our friendship firmly
+enough established to allow me that privilege?  What time is it?"  He
+glanced at his watch.  "Ten minutes past two, and I've had no luncheon.
+Have you?"  Nancy admitted that she hadn't.
+
+"Good.  I can't begin to tell you how awfully lucky I consider myself
+in having met you, Miss Prescott.  I wish you would come with me to
+some nice little restaurant where we can decide the affairs of the
+nations.  Are you in a great hurry?"
+
+Nancy said that she wasn't.  To tell the truth she was very glad that
+Mr. Arnold _had_ concerned himself in her affairs, which she had begun
+to believe she was not managing any too well.  They had talked in low
+voices so that the shopkeeper could only have heard fragments of their
+conversation, and then left the shop, without even a word of
+explanation to the irritated old money-lender.
+
+Mr. Arnold hailed a taxi-cab, and they rolled off in state.  Mr. Arnold
+had given the driver the address of a little French restaurant on West
+Forty-fifth Street.
+
+"It'll be fairly empty now, and we can find just the table we want.
+_I_ shall order your luncheon for you, because I know just exactly what
+things are peculiar to this place--their special tid-bits, and I feel
+like ordering a regular knock-out of a feast as a sort of celebration.
+Really, you've no idea how delighted I am to have discovered you."  His
+frank, boyish pleasure in this freak of chance was so plainly written
+on his beaming face, that Nancy colored with a schoolgirl's naive
+delight in such sincere flattery.  The dreaded undertaking of her trip
+to the city was turning into a very charming little surprise party.  In
+some way, she felt that she had known Mr. Arnold for a very long time,
+and that really there was not the slightest need for concealing
+anything from him.  His odd, attractive face was so friendly, his
+bright brown eyes so full of eager sympathetic interest, that almost
+before she had given a second thought as to whether she should or she
+shouldn't, she had begun to tell him the reason for her appearance at
+the pawnbroker's.
+
+They had found a little table in a corner of the restaurant, and Mr.
+Arnold had insisted upon ordering almost everything on the menu that
+attracted his fancy.
+
+"And above all things, you must try the hot chocolate, Miss Prescott.
+I suppose it's not manly, but I have the most juvenile fondness for hot
+chocolate, with great big blobs of whipped cream."
+
+So hot chocolate they had, and innumerable rolls, hot and fresh from
+the oven, and various and sundry other delicacies, calculated to
+cripple a weak digestion for a month at the very least.
+
+Drawn out by her growing confidence in him, and by her craving to talk
+out her troubles to some one whose advice would be sound and based on
+genuine sympathy, Nancy told him about her necessity for getting some
+money.  The explanation involved a good many complications, and Nancy
+was as a rule unusually reserved.  But Mr. Arnold was one of those
+rather rare people who can understand a great deal more than is said in
+just so many words, and she did not have to go into details as to why,
+for example, she hesitated to ask her uncle for the money, or why it
+was impossible to write to her mother for it.  She told him simply that
+there was a girl at school to whom her sister was indebted, and who had
+played Alma a very shabby trick; and that, therefore, she felt that it
+was absolutely imperative to clear Alma of the obligation to her.  He
+listened attentively, interposing occasionally in the friendly tone
+such as an older man might use to a young one, so that she felt no
+embarrassment in making the whole affair clear to him.  Nor did he seem
+to think that there was anything very awful in her trying to raise the
+money for herself with the ring as a security.
+
+"Only you should have gotten someone's advice, Miss Prescott.  A man
+like Zeigler would swindle you outrageously, and there are plenty of
+reputable places which make loans on jewelry as a security.  How large
+is the debt?"  Nancy told him.
+
+"A hundred and ten dollars?  You are unwilling to ask your uncle?"
+Then seeing a look of distress in her face, he went on hastily: "Well,
+I think I can understand.  I admire your independence, Miss Prescott.
+I say," he asked suddenly, with a touch of shyness, "would you mind if
+I should call you Nancy?  It sounds so much more friendly."
+
+"I---I'd like you to," replied Nancy, simply.  "It makes me feel sort
+of old to be called Miss Prescott."
+
+"Very well, and it makes me feel quite antique to be called Mr. Arnold.
+I wish you'd flatter me into believing myself young once more by
+calling me George."
+
+"Oh, goodness, I don't believe I could!  I--I mean that sounds so
+dreadfully cheeky!" exclaimed Nancy.
+
+"I suppose I must seem actually prehistoric to you," he said with a
+laugh that sounded just a little bit forced.  "But if you practised a
+bit, you'd probably find that it would get easier for you, and it would
+please me very much.  To return to business--I think that if you will
+let me have the ring, I can get the money on it for you this afternoon.
+I know the best place to go, where you will get something really
+proportionate to its value, and on the best terms."
+
+Nancy could have hugged him in her relief and gratitude.  She protested
+a little feebly against his putting himself to any trouble, but he
+waved her words aside, and she took the ring from her bag, and gave it
+to him.  He looked at it curiously; inside the broad finger band was
+inscribed in characters almost obliterated by wear, the words, "To
+George, on his 21st birthday, 1891."'
+
+"It was Father's.  Uncle Thomas gave it to him," explained Nancy,
+simply, and at the same moment both of them were thinking of the
+eccentric old gentleman, whose gift to a beloved nephew was now being
+used to assist that nephew's daughter in a difficulty in which _his_
+help was denied her.
+
+"Now, how would you like to spend your time for three-quarters of an
+hour or so?" asked Mr. Arnold, as they walked out of the restaurant.
+"I am going off with this ring and I'll be back with the money as soon
+as I possibly can.  You pick some place for me to meet you."
+
+Nancy glanced up and down the street, trying to find some spot where
+she could amuse herself.
+
+"I think I'd like to look around some book-shop--is there one near
+here?"
+
+"I'm an authority on the subject.  I know every book-shop in New York,
+and if you'll follow me I'll show you my favorite haunt.  Then I can be
+sure that you won't wander away--my only trouble will be in getting you
+out of the place, and if I were wise I wouldn't let you go there under
+any circumstances.  But my generosity was always very much greater than
+my wisdom."
+
+He conducted Nancy, accordingly, to this paradise, and rather
+lingeringly withdrew on his errand, leaving her in the quaint little
+shop, where perfect tidal waves of books rose on all sides of her,
+distracting her with alluring, familiar titles, with the sight of
+hundreds upon hundreds of rare old volumes, and with that peculiar
+smell of leather and paper and ink and mustiness which is to the
+nostrils of the book-lover as the scent of earth and trees is to the
+wanderer.
+
+On one of the shelves her eyes caught a glimpse of a name on the back
+of three or four delicately bound volumes, and she quickly took one of
+them down to inspect it, suddenly remembering her uncle's remark about
+that "author-person."  The name on the back of the book was "George
+Arnold."  It was a volume of stories, finely bound, and illustrated
+with pen drawings by a very famous artist and designer; and was
+prefaced by a foreword from the pen of one of the most celebrated of
+the present-day English critics.
+
+Nancy promptly climbed up on a high stool that stood near the shelf,
+and with her heels hooked on the second rung and the book spread open
+on her lap began to read.  She had time to glance only here and there;
+and it was with surprise and pleasure that she saw a sentence in the
+preface which spoke of the "writings of Mr. Arnold" as being "an
+example of the most delicate artistry.  A talent so rare, so peculiarly
+sensitive, so rich in a wholly inimitable poetry, and waywardness of
+fancy, that one hardly hesitates to pronounce it actual genius."  And
+it was this "genius," this "prophet in his own country," who at the
+present moment was hurrying off in _her_ service.  Nancy felt a
+positive thrill of dismay, mingled with something else that was wholly
+pleasant and exciting.  But how in the world could she ever call him
+"George."  Imagine calling a famous writer by his first name--it seemed
+impertinent, to say the least.
+
+To tell the truth, she spent a good deal more of her time thinking
+about this simple, friendly gentleman than in browsing over the
+book-shelves which, under ordinary circumstance, would have been so
+fascinating to her.  Why was he so very nice to _her_--insignificant
+her?  How could she possibly be interesting to a man who had probably
+been intimate with many of the most celebrated men and women of the
+day?  But, of course, it was very likely that he wasn't particularly
+interested in her, and was only that he had a generous disposition.  He
+was ever so much older than she was--thirty-four anyway--and probably
+he thought she was a nice child.
+
+She was pondering thus, the book still open on her lap, and her back to
+the door, when he returned, flushed with satisfaction, and also with
+haste.
+
+"I say, I've done a marvellous stroke of business," he announced, as he
+came up behind her.  "You seem to have found a very absorbing book,
+Nancy--aren't you at all interested in learning what my amazing talent
+for high finance has accomplished?"
+
+"I can't tell you how good you have been to me," began Nancy,
+gratefully and shyly.
+
+"I haven't been good to you a bit.  It's you who have been good to
+_let_ me help you," he said, smiling down into her eyes.  "I take it as
+a very high compliment that you were frank enough with me to tell me
+how I could serve you; because there is nothing, you know, that I would
+rather do.  That sounds rather flowery, doesn't it?  But it's quite
+true.  Now listen--I have brought you the sum of one hundred and fifty
+American dollars.  That's more than you expected to get on the ring,
+isn't it?"
+
+"A hundred and fifty!"
+
+"Here it is, in beautiful clean notes.  I'll explain it all to you
+presently.  Did you find anything nice?  What book have you got there?"
+He glanced at the volume she held, and seeing what it was, laughed, and
+took it away from her.
+
+"How did you ever find _that_?" he asked, in a deprecating voice,
+though, at that, genuinely modest as he was, he was not ill-pleased.
+"I thought you would have found something better.  I'm not posing as
+the modest author, and all that sort of thing, but there are some
+wonderful books in here that you shouldn't have missed."
+
+"I--I didn't know you were--I mean----"
+
+"You mean you didn't know that I was all that that critic chap says I
+am?  Well, I'm not.  He's just gotten into the amiable habit of saying
+kind things in his old age--so that he can get into Heaven when he
+dies, in spite of all the damage he did in his youth.  Come
+along--unless you want to look about you some more."
+
+"I'll be ready in a moment," said Nancy, slipping off the stool.
+"I--there's something being wrapped for me that I want to get."  With
+that she went off to the back of the store and had the little volume
+tied up, and paid for it with the last cent in her pocketbook.  Then
+she returned.
+
+"All right now?  Here is your money."  He took a fat envelope out of
+his pocket and gave it to her, and they left the shop.
+
+As they walked across to Fifth Avenue, he explained to her rather
+vaguely the proceeding by which he had raised the money for her; but
+while she quite failed to understand it all she rested upon her faith
+in his superior intelligence in business matters.
+
+"When I want to get the ring back again, what do I do? and don't I have
+to pay interest?"
+
+"Oh, no, you don't have to pay interest, that's the wonderful part of
+it.  And when you want it back, you just tell me.  I'll have to get it
+for you, but you won't mind that, will you?"
+
+"Oh, no--oh, you _have_ been so kind, Mr. Arnold, I mean, G-George.
+Only you won't say anything to Uncle Thomas--of course you won't, but
+I'm just mentioning that."
+
+"I won't breathe a word to any living thing on land or sea.  This is
+our own private conspiracy, and no one shall have any part in it," he
+assured her, gaily.  "Only please promise me that, if you should need
+any help again, you'll ask me.  I--it disturbed me very much to find
+you at old Zeigler's, though of course it was my good fortune."
+
+There was an abundance of time before Nancy's train left, so they
+strolled at an easy pace down Fifth Avenue, stopping to look in at the
+shop windows whenever they saw anything that caught their fancy, and
+chatting together as if they had known each other all their lives.  At
+the corner of Forty-fourth Street, Mr. Arnold suddenly dove into a huge
+florist's shop on the corner, and in a moment returned bearing a bunch
+of Parma violets, tied with a silken cord and tassel.
+
+"I say, will you wear these?" he asked, bluntly.  "You know, I always
+wanted to give a bouquet to a young lady, but I never could find the
+young lady to whom I wanted to give them.  The flowers were plentiful,
+but I began to think that the lady didn't exist."  Nancy colored at the
+compliment with which he proffered her the flowers, and dimpled as only
+a rosy girl can dimple.  His attentions were very flattering, and his
+half-shy, boyish manner made them doubly so.
+
+"Now do tell me what book you have there?" he asked, as they turned
+east on Forty-second Street.  "Is it something very learned or very
+frivolous?"
+
+With a little laugh, Nancy handed him the package.
+
+"You can open it, if you promise to tie it up again," she said,
+watching his face out of the corners of her eyes, as he untied the
+string.  He glanced from the book to her face, trying to look
+disapproving, though he could not quite conceal his look of naive
+pleasure.
+
+"_Very_ frivolous.  I see that I shall have to direct your book-buying
+as well as your business.  Why didn't you let me get it for you if you
+wanted it?"
+
+"Because I wanted to get it for myself--you probably wouldn't have let
+me get it."
+
+"Well, if I had given it to you, I could have written something in it,
+and that's something I always wanted to do, you know, something about
+'the compliments of the author' in a flowing script."
+
+"Well, why don't you write something in it anyway?"
+
+"May I?"
+
+"Only not 'the compliments of the author.'"
+
+He took her to the train, and then standing beside her seat, took out
+his fountain pen, and scribbled on the fly-leaf of the little volume.
+
+"There," he said, handing it back to her.  "Now, good-bye.  I am going
+to see you again in the holidays, am I not?  I have enjoyed two or
+three hours to-day more than I have enjoyed anything in years."  He
+took her hand and shook it warmly, and then as the train gave a warning
+jerk, he hurried off.
+
+With the great fragrant bunch of violets at her waist, with money in
+her pocket to set her mind at rest, and with the memory of a singularly
+pleasant episode, Nancy saw the wintry landscape, over which a fresh
+snow was beginning to fall, through rosy spectacles.  Somehow, not even
+the thought of the latest and greatest trouble loomed so very black and
+terrifying in her mind.  She glanced down at the little book in her
+lap, and then opened it at the fly-leaf.  He had written, "To
+commemorate To-day," and had signed it simply, "George."  It had been a
+day of unusual unhappiness and unusual pleasure--not even he had
+understood what the mingling had been for Nancy, but the memory of the
+pleasure outweighed the memory of trouble; as if ashamed of herself she
+tried to fix her thoughts on plans for helping and advising her mother
+and Alma; but at length she gave it up, to review the little,
+delightful trivial memories of "To-day," putting off the recollection
+of trouble until To-morrow.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+PARADISE COTTAGE
+
+The twenty-second of December, a red letter date, indeed, for some
+fifty excited, bustling girls, dawned without bringing much of a thrill
+to the two Prescotts.  Neither of them could enter with genuine
+enthusiasm into the gay holiday anticipations of the others, finding in
+them too depressing a contrast to their own expectations of a not very
+happy Christmas tide.
+
+Nancy had shown Alma their mother's letter, and had had several long
+and serious talks with the poor child, who had been almost overcome
+with despair.  Neither of them even thought of the matter of the
+examination, that trouble having been completely wiped out by the newer
+and heavier one, nor did they draw any particular satisfaction from the
+fact that Alma's Latin examination had been credited, and her name
+cleared of suspicion, while the identity of the actual culprit remained
+their own secret.  The debt to Mildred had been paid, Alma evidently
+believing that the money had been sent by Providence, and asking Nancy
+no questions.
+
+So far as the matter of the examination was concerned, Miss Leland had
+allowed the subject to drop, simply announcing her gratification at the
+fact that there had unquestionably been a mistake, and that Miss
+Drinkwater was satisfied on this point.  A coldness that reached the
+condition of an almost habitual silence sprang up between Alma and
+Mildred, and the fact that Mildred asked for no explanations gave
+further circumstantial proof of her own guilt.
+
+The incident of her trip to New York with the ring and her meeting with
+Mr. Arnold Nancy did not mention; feeling a peculiar shyness about it,
+and a wholesome dread of being teased.  Her violets had been smuggled
+up to her room so that they would not lead to questions and jokes, and
+had faded away slowly in an inconspicuous corner, diffusing their
+fragrance extravagantly as they drooped and wilted over the edges of a
+tooth-brush mug.  But two of them had been chosen to immortalize their
+memory, and had been carefully pressed between the pages of the little
+volume of stories.
+
+After a first outburst of despair and tears, Alma had taken the bad
+news from home with a quiet pluck that surprised and touched Nancy.
+Her old-time unquestioning faith in Nancy was revived again, and she
+felt that if Nancy could take a cheerful view of the outlook, why, it
+could not be so very bad.
+
+They left for home again, on the early afternoon train, with ten or
+fifteen of the other girls, all of whom were, of course, in the highest
+spirits.  Only Charlotte knew that they would not return to Miss
+Leland's after the holidays, and her sorrow at parting with Nancy was
+touchingly apparent in her effort to seem cheerful.
+
+It was after four o'clock when the two girls, trudging up from the
+Melbrook station, through the snow, at length came in sight of the
+little brown house.  The long red rays of the sinking sun threw the
+shadows of the bare trees across the unbroken white surface of the
+lawn; and the cottage, with its gabled roof, was silhouetted against
+the ruddy, western sky, so that it looked as if the light were
+radiating from it.
+
+"Oh, Nancy!"  Alma turned a shining face to her sister.  "I don't much
+care what happens--it's home, and nothing can change that!  Mother and
+Hannah's inside, and there's a fire, and it's all so snug, and safe,
+and _loving_!"
+
+Nancy, who was gazing at the beloved little place with bright, dreamy
+eyes, and that tender smile on her mouth that always gave her face a
+singularly winning sweetness, answered:
+
+"It makes me think of a picture I saw once--it was called the 'House at
+Paradise'--I don't know why.  It was just the picture of a quaint
+little house, that seemed to be glowing from something inside of
+it--and perhaps because the house in the picture made me think of our
+home, I've always thought of this as 'Paradise Cottage.'  Oh, my dear,
+let's run!"
+
+It was not until after supper, when they had gathered around the
+fireside just as they used to, in dressing-gowns and slippers, that
+they opened the council of war.
+
+"Oh, my dears, what can you do?" sighed Mrs. Prescott.  "I had hoped
+for so much.  It will kill me to feel that my daughters are forced to
+work for their living by my fault."
+
+"I really do think that I'd sort of like to make some money," added
+Alma.  "Of course I'm not fitted for anything in particular, but, do
+you know, I was just wondering why I couldn't get some position like
+that girl in Mr. Dixon's office.--Do you know what, she said that after
+the first of the year she expected to get a position in New York, and
+I'll bet my hat that I could get that very place!"
+
+Inspired by this sudden idea, Alma sat bolt upright on the shabby sofa,
+and pursing up her lips, with self-satisfaction looked from her mother
+to Nancy, who promptly applauded.
+
+"Brilliant!  I remember her saying that, too.  Let's go over and see
+Mr. Dixon to-morrow," said Nancy.  "I don't see why _I_ couldn't give
+lessons, you know, tutor children--like the two little Porterbridge
+girls, for example.  Margaret doesn't go to school because she's so
+delicate, and I know that last winter Mrs. Porterbridge kept Dorothy at
+home with her.  I might even be able to get up a little class.  I don't
+look so awfully young, and lots of girls my age have done it.  Miss
+Drinkwater at school told me that she had begun to help her father with
+his pupils when she was less than seventeen, and I'll be eighteen in
+March.  I'd love it, too."
+
+Soon they were all chatting and laughing like schoolgirls, the three of
+them.
+
+"I used to think I wanted ever so many things," observed Alma, with a
+pretty little air of earnest thought fulness.  "But do you know what,
+I've discovered that I never really wanted anything more than what I've
+already got--you and Nancy, Mother."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+THE INCOMPREHENSIBLE MR. PRESCOTT
+
+A little after five o'clock on a dull January afternoon the two sisters
+met on the road that ran from Melbrook to the cottage.  It had been
+just a week since they had actually started in "working."  Alma had
+just spoken in time to get the position that had been opened in the
+young village lawyer's office, guided by a kindly Providence.
+
+"I don't see how you are clever enough to teach, Nancy," said Alma,
+looking at her sister's rather tired face with admiration.  "I'd be
+throwing books and things inside of five minutes.  But isn't it
+wonderful to think that we are really and truly making money?  Did you
+ever believe that we could do it?  I just hope that Uncle Thomas hears
+what we are doing--that'll just show him that we don't want anything
+from _him_.  I wonder what Mildred would say to us--wouldn't she be
+shocked, though?"
+
+Inside the little house, Alma banged the door behind her, while Nancy
+shouted gaily to her mother up-stairs.
+
+"Well, well, well, what is all this noise for?" inquired a calm,
+masculine voice from the sitting-room.  The two girls stopped still,
+thunderstruck; for the voice, unfamiliar in its genial accents, was
+nevertheless unmistakably the voice of Mr. Prescott!  Alma stared at
+Nancy, Nancy stared back at Alma, neither of them knowing whether to
+stay where they were or to go forward.
+
+"I shan't bite," remarked Mr. Prescott, mildly.  Nancy boldly advanced,
+being on more familiar terms with the "Ogre" than the frankly terrified
+Alma, and to Alma's amazement he proceeded to kiss them both, and then,
+as if embarrassed, cleared his throat, and said "How-do-you-do" in a
+dry, formal tone.
+
+In a few moments Mrs. Prescott came downstairs.  She looked older and
+sadder than she had the last time he had seen her, and, because she had
+denied herself any new clothes since she had lost the money, she now
+wore an old gown which she had had for years.  It was not a pose with
+her, for she no longer pitied herself, or bemoaned her limited means,
+but rather a sincere half-childlike desire to punish herself for
+having, as she believed, deprived her daughters of what she considered
+the best things in life.  Nevertheless, her natural instinct for
+daintiness had asserted itself in the little touches of lace at the
+neck and wrists--and she looked pretty and dignified as she greeted Mr.
+Prescott.
+
+It was not long before the first feeling of constraint wore off.  As
+Alma said afterwards, it was impossible to believe that they had been
+laughing and chatting with the "Ogre" "just as if he were a nice old
+man."  He called Mrs. Prescott "Lallie," and paid her two compliments.
+He gave them a very long discourse on the value of a scientific
+education for everybody, and from that veered off into a heated tirade
+against the uselessness of modern education, anyway.
+
+"Am I to understand that you two young ladies are--earning money?"
+inquired Mr. Prescott.  Amusement, chagrin, curiosity, and admiration
+were mingled in his changing expressions.
+
+"Indeed we are," replied Alma, quite beaming with self-satisfaction.
+"_Ever_ so much.  Of course, Nancy makes more than I, now--Nance is
+much cleverer than I, but Nancy's work is more the intellectual kind,
+you know, and Nancy will probably be famous, and I'll be rich."
+
+"Bless my soul!" gasped the "Ogre," then suddenly he threw back his
+head, and laughed and laughed, nor could Nancy and Mrs. Prescott keep
+from joining in.  The more Alma proclaimed her enthusiasm for business,
+the more patent her utterly delightful inaptitude for it became.
+
+Then he grew grave, and turning to Mrs. Prescott said, in a gentle,
+friendly voice:
+
+"Lallie, I wish you would tell me--everything that has happened.  I
+would be very dull, indeed, if I could not guess that you and my nieces
+have had a new misfortune.  I blame myself.  I--I have made mistakes,
+and--well, life is very short."
+
+Mrs. Prescott was silent for a moment, and sat up stiffly, as if
+uncertain whether she should listen to the dictates of her pride or of
+her hopes.  Then presently, speaking in a quiet, monotonous voice, she
+told him about her bad investment, and why she had made it.
+
+When Mrs. Prescott had finished speaking, everyone was silent for a
+little while.  Then Mr. Prescott said, abruptly:
+
+"You have been only vain, Lallie."  Then, bluntly but not unkindly,
+turning to Mrs. Prescott.  "Very vain, very foolish.  And now that
+we've talked business, I'm going to ask if I may stay to supper?"
+
+Of course he stayed.  And Hannah, as she saw the last of her delicacies
+vanishing silently down the "Ogre's" lean, old throat, indulged in a
+bright vision of his eventual surrender.
+
+But, having stuck to his principles for thirteen years, Mr. Prescott
+was not a man to change them in a moment of impulse.  After that
+evening at his niece's he made no further reference to their affairs,
+and seemed quite oblivious of their difficulties.  Some very narrow
+straits lay ahead of the Prescotts, and they had to deny themselves
+things that once their little income had allowed them.
+
+Winter wore away into spring, and the girls went on doggedly with their
+tasks.  Miss Bancroft had gone away for a month or so.  They had been
+to see her several times during the winter, and she had dropped in to
+see Mrs. Prescott fairly often.  There had been something very
+delightful in those few afternoons spent with her; for she was one of
+those charming old ladies who remain perennially girlish, and her
+interest and sympathy in their talk had won from them a very warm
+affection.  Mr. Arnold had not appeared on the scenes during the entire
+winter and spring; having gone to England, Miss Bancroft had casually
+explained, for an indefinite stay.  This intelligence had depressed
+Nancy unaccountably, but she explained her depression to herself on the
+grounds that she was worried about reclaiming the ring, which she
+valued so dearly.
+
+As the days grew longer, they had their tea out in the little garden,
+which Nancy zealously tended.  And these pleasant evenings made the
+whole day seem quite cheerful--if it had not been for the incessant
+worry about the future.
+
+One afternoon in the middle of the month, they were sitting out in the
+little arbor, where the vines, covered with a veil of delicate, sticky
+little leaves, already offered a light shade from the beams of the
+western sun.  As Nancy turned her head to say something joking to Alma,
+she noticed for the first time how very quiet her sister had been while
+they had been talking.  Alma was lying full length on the little bench,
+with her arm across her eyes.  Evidently feeling that her mother and
+sister were wondering what was the matter, she took away her arm,
+revealing a feverishly flushed face and heavy eyelids.  "I just have a
+beastly old headache," she explained drowsily.  "It isn't anything but
+spring fever."
+
+"You poor little kid!" cried Nancy, going to her in concern and
+throwing her arm around her.
+
+"It isn't anything," said Alma, feebly.  "I had it yesterday, too, but
+it wasn't so bad."
+
+"Well, I'm going to see if you have any fever, anyway," Nancy said
+quietly, not liking the look of Alma's hot cheeks and crimson lips.
+
+They got Alma to bed, and in a few moments after her head had sunk into
+the cool pillow, she had dozed off into a heavy sleep.  Nancy tried to
+conceal her uneasiness, but Alma had a fever of a hundred and one,
+which is not common to a simple headache.
+
+But the visit from Dr. Bevan, cheerful as he was, did anything but set
+their fears at rest.
+
+Nancy could only stare from him to her mother in speechless
+consternation, when it developed next day that Alma had the measles
+beyond a doubt.  In the morning Mr. Dixon and the Porterbridges were
+notified that the Prescotts could not be at their work.  The situation
+was indeed a pretty serious crisis in their career; for their income
+was reduced at once by something over a hundred dollars a month.  This
+worry, however, was completely dwarfed when, on the third day after
+Alma had fallen ill, Dr. Bevan announced that he thought it best to
+send a trained nurse.
+
+Nancy had had about all that she could bear, and without saying another
+word, rushed off, to bury her face in the sofa cushions, and smother
+her frantic sobs from her mother's ears.  It seemed to her absolutely
+certain that Alma was going to die, and her mind filled with little
+forgotten memories, each of which stabbed her with an agonizing pang of
+misery.
+
+The nurse, a very tall, strong, rosy woman named Miss Tracy, arrived
+about noon-time and, quickly changing into her stiff white uniform,
+ordered Mrs. Prescott off to lie down, telling Nancy that there was no
+need for either of them to worry.  Her presence, her brisk, thorough,
+confident manner, lifted a hundred pounds from their hearts, and for
+the first time in three days they drew a breath of relief.  Mrs.
+Prescott, who sadly needed sleep, lay down in her own room, and Nancy,
+who had not been out of the house since Alma had fallen ill, took a
+book and went out onto the porch to free her mind of worries that
+seemed to have dulled her thoughts.  Everything had become so
+complicated, it was so utterly impossible to know what was to be done,
+that she felt as if it were no use worrying, as if something unforeseen
+would have to happen to solve difficulties that were absolutely beyond
+their power to solve.  And so she merely wondered idly how the nurse's
+bills and the doctor's bills were to be paid.  And finally, the warm
+air and the whirr of the lawn-mower, and the sleepy hum in the vines,
+made her drowsy; her eyelids fell, opened, and then closed again.
+
+"Oh, yes, I'm a very great man.  I know the King of England
+intimately," someone who did not look at all _like_ Mr. Arnold, a fat,
+pompous-looking man with mutton-chop whiskers, who, however, was Mr.
+Arnold, kept repeating to her; and she kept wondering, "Why did I think
+he was so nice?  Why did I think he was good-looking?"
+
+Then all at once she heard someone coming up the wooden steps of the
+porch.  She sat bolt upright, putting hasty hands to her tumbled, curly
+hair, and with dazed, sleepy eyes stared at the newcomer with a
+positively unintelligent expression of amazement.  At length she
+articulated, in an almost reproachful tone:
+
+"I thought you were in Europe.  You _were_ in Europe."
+
+"Yes.  But one doesn't have to stay in Europe, you know, unless they
+put you in jail over there, and I always try to avoid that," returned
+Mr. Arnold pleasantly.
+
+"But you've been there for months," said Nancy, quite aware that she
+wasn't talking perfectly good sense.  And then they both burst out
+laughing.
+
+"Alma is ill," Nancy told him.  "She has measles, and we are in
+quarantine, so you ought to go away."
+
+He looked at her tired face, where the strain of fear and trouble
+showed in her pale cheeks and heavy eyes, and then he smiled in his
+warm, understanding way, and said gently:
+
+"You've been worried to death about something, haven't you, Nancy?
+Well, I'm not going to ask you any questions now, only, whenever you
+feel that you want to, remember that you can tell me anything.  Would
+you rather I went away now and came back later on, when you are less
+troubled?  Is there anything I can do?"
+
+"Oh, don't go away--I mean, it's very nice to see you.  Alma has a
+nurse now, and I think she is going to be better soon--and it's so
+_cheerful_ to see you!"
+
+"Does Mr. Prescott know of Alma's illness?" he asked, after a moment's
+hesitation.  "I don't think my aunt does.  She has just come back.  I
+landed the day before yesterday, and came down here last night.  I--I
+asked her about you all, and she said nothing about Alma's being ill."
+
+"No, I don't suppose Uncle Thomas does know," answered Nancy.  "He
+comes over to see us every now and then, but then again he'll shut
+himself up for quite a long while, and I don't think he knows what we
+are doing any more than we know what he's doing."
+
+"You know I'm buying a house here in Melbrook," said Mr. Arnold, rather
+irrelevantly.  "A very nice house--do you know that yellow one, with
+the white columns and the porte-cochere over on Tindale Road?"
+
+"I do know the one you mean," cried Nancy.  "It's a beauty.  There's
+the loveliest old-fashioned garden----"
+
+"That's it--that's the one.  I--you're sure you like it?"
+
+For some reason or other Nancy turned pink at this simple question, and
+tried to stammer a casual reply.  Then he went on serenely:
+
+"I expect to have it in pretty good shape in a week or two, and when
+your sister is better, I'd love to have you and your mother and Alma
+come over and have tea with me.  Aunt Eliza is directing the furnishing
+and all that--she's quite in her element, but I'd love to have your
+expert advice too.  Heavens, _I_ don't know anything about chintz, and
+scrim, and all that sort of foolishness."
+
+He chatted along, telling her about his trip, recounting amusing little
+incidents of the things that had happened on the boat, and completely
+carrying her thoughts away from her own personal affairs.  But after a
+little while she began to notice that he was really not thinking about
+what he was saying, that he seemed to have something on his mind, which
+he was always on the point of saying, and then veered off to something
+else.  All at once he got up and remarked abruptly:
+
+"What the dickens do I care personally for chintzes and scrim?  I don't
+know which is which."  Nancy stared at him, thinking that he had taken
+leave of his senses.  He rammed his long, brown hands fiercely into the
+pockets of his gray trousers, took them out again, and thrust them into
+the pockets of his coat; then, as if he had taken a deep breath, and
+was holding it, he said:
+
+"Will you marry me, Nancy?"
+
+She could not have uttered a word.  She simply sat and stared at him.
+Then, without being conscious of a single idea in her head, she jumped
+up and made a dive for the door.  He caught her hand and made her turn
+around and face him.  He had begun to smile, slightly, and it was that
+gentle, wonderfully sweet smile, half-amused and half-tender, that made
+her blush from the yoke of her gingham dress up to the edge of her hair.
+
+"Well--will you?"
+
+"I--I don't know," stammered Nancy; with that she promptly turned and
+fled into the house.
+
+Mr. Arnold stood regarding the screen-door with a blank expression;
+then, after a moment or two, he walked away slowly.  It was not until
+he had reached the gate that he remembered he had left his hat on one
+of the porch chairs.
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+Alma was sitting up.  Wrapped in a pink blanket, with her yellow curls
+pinned on top of her head, where they nodded like the heads of
+daffodils, surrounded by her admiring family, including Hannah and the
+trained nurse, and a perfect garden of spring flowers, which had been
+arriving daily since the appearance of Mr. Arnold, she was convalescing
+visibly.
+
+"I didn't know that Mr. Arnold was back," said Alma, burying her small
+nose in a huge bouquet of white lilacs.  "Isn't it perfectly dear of
+him to send these things, when I only met him once in my life?"  Upon
+which guileless remark Nancy turned a lively and hopelessly noticeable
+scarlet.  To make her embarrassment quite complete, Alma looked
+directly into her eyes and grinned deliberately.
+
+"I wonder why he takes such a tremendous interest in us?" she went on,
+mercilessly.  "I feel it in my bones.  I feel as if something perfectly
+scrumptious were going to happen."  Mrs. Prescott laughed and kissed
+her.
+
+"Now, Nancy, come on, and 'fess up," was the bomb which Alma hurled
+without a word of warning.  "I know perfectly well that you've got
+something on your conscience, and I've got a suspicion already that
+it's Mr. Arnold."
+
+If she was desirous of creating a sensation, she should have been amply
+satisfied with the result of her remarks.  Mrs. Prescott, as if she had
+been suddenly aroused from sleep, opened her pretty mouth and stared at
+her elder daughter for a moment and then exclaimed:
+
+"I must have been dreaming!"  Nancy squirmed.  She looked reproachfully
+at Alma, then at her mother, and at length said simply:
+
+"He--he asked me to marry him."  And then she followed with the whole
+story.  She told them of her visit to her uncle, where she had seen Mr.
+Arnold for the second time, and then went on to give a full account of
+her memorable trip to the pawnbrokers' with the ring.
+
+"I--I would have told you everything long ago, but I didn't want you to
+think that Uncle Thomas was 'relenting' because he asked me to visit
+him--and about the other time----"  Alma stopped her by leaning over
+and kissing her.
+
+"You were paying for _my_ experience," Alma said bravely.  "I
+learned--I don't know what exactly, except that people like Mildred,
+whom I always thought as being important to know, weren't worth one
+teeny little ounce of trouble.  I learned to be honest with myself, and
+that it's a whole lot better to work with your two hands than to be a
+toady, for the sake of making things easier,--and lots else.  And I'm
+going to work hard, Nancy----"
+
+"Stuff and nonsense!" declared an angry voice from the doorway.  From a
+gargantuan bouquet of hyacinths, lilacs, and daffodils, issued the
+voice of the "Ogre."  Evidently, finding the front door open, and the
+lower floor deserted, and hearing the sound of voices from above, the
+old gentleman had borne his offering aloft, without a word of
+announcement.  Snorting with some inward indignation, he testily tossed
+his head to get rid of an impudent lilac which was tickling his nose,
+and glared over the bouquet.
+
+"This idea of working is pure foolishness.  I never heard of such
+women's nonsense before in my life.  Here, where in the name of common
+sense can I put these flowers, and why wasn't I informed of my niece's
+illness?"  When Nancy, stifling her unseemly laughter, had relieved him
+of his offering, he grew calmer.
+
+"Why wasn't I told that you were ill, my dear?" he asked, sitting down
+and taking Alma's hand in his.
+
+"We--we hardly thought of anything until she began to be better,"
+answered Mrs. Prescott.  He looked at her sternly a moment, and then
+his whole face softened, almost to a look of humility and
+shame-facedness.
+
+"Once you told me that you were a foolish woman, Lallie," he said, "and
+I must confess that for a very long time I was blind enough, and
+selfish enough, to think it of you.  Now it's only fair that I should
+be as brave as you and admit that I have been a very foolish man.  I
+have been about the biggest fool that ever escaped the badge of long
+ears.  All I did was to deprive myself of a lot of happiness, and to
+deprive some other very dear people of happiness that it was my
+privilege to bestow.
+
+"Now, the truth is, that while my 'principles' were excellent,--they
+wouldn't work.  They didn't do _me_ any good.  Hang it all!  Here I was
+trying to make good, thrifty wives out of you two girls, for some young
+rascal--and depriving myself of the sweetest pleasure in life for that
+same impudent young husband who shan't have you, anyway!
+
+"They were excellent principles, too, their only fault being that
+they--wouldn't work.
+
+"And now, ladies, I herewith adopt you.  I shall establish my legal
+right to you all.  I--I feel--well, I hope I have made it quite clear,
+that anything, everything--on this green earth, that I can give you, is
+yours.  And if you want to make me very happy, you'll demand it
+instantly."
+
+For a little time no one said anything, then, heaving a great sigh,
+Alma burst out:
+
+"Uncle Thomas, I'll expire if I don't hug you!"
+
+And when she _had_ hugged him, until there was more likelihood of _his_
+demise than her own, he said:
+
+"I'm afraid I'm breaking up a brilliant business career for you, ma'am.
+The little that I can offer you is a mere nothing compared to the
+dazzling prospects which were opening before you----"
+
+"You needn't be jocose, Uncle," interrupted Alma, severely.  "Many a
+millionaire started on only five cents, and _I_ started on fifteen
+dollars!"
+
+"I hear that young Arnold is buying a house here," remarked Mr.
+Prescott.  "Now, what in the world is he doing that for?"
+
+"Why, indeed?" murmured Alma, wickedly.  "The truth is, Uncle Thomas
+that he is madly in love with me.  He sent me all these flowers, and,
+measles or no measles, he has been serenading me every night; hasn't
+he, Miss Tracy?"
+
+"Alma!  You ridiculous creature," cried Mrs. Prescott, joining in the
+laugh at this nonsense.  Uncle Thomas looked amused but puzzled, hardly
+certain whether to believe there was an element of truth in this
+rigmarole or not.  He glanced from Mrs. Prescott to Alma, to Nancy, and
+there he paused.  He was a good enough reader of faces to know now
+where the wind lay, and his eyes grew sober.
+
+"Well, my dear little niece, you're pretty young," he said gently, "but
+one is never too young to be happy.  What do you think, Lallie?"
+
+Mrs. Prescott smiled, although there were tears in her eyes, and said:
+
+"Ask Nancy, Uncle Thomas."
+
+"Well, Nancy?"
+
+Nancy tried to laugh, as she took her mother's hand and Alma's, and
+faltered again:
+
+"I--I don't know."
+
+But here we, who can see into the minds of all these people, have no
+hesitation about saying in just so many words, that she did know very
+well; only she didn't know that she knew.
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+The "Ogre" had sent a note to his nieces, asking them for dinner on a
+certain June evening.  And strange to relate it was Nancy who delayed
+the proceedings.  When she finally joined her admiring family she was
+deliciously conscious that a dress of pale gold-colored organdie, and a
+broad-brimmed hat trimmed with delicate blue flowers, were about the
+most becoming things she could possibly wear.  And she was not entirely
+ignorant of the fact that she could be very, very pretty when she
+wanted to.  It was pleasant to register this interesting fact on other
+people also, Miss Bancroft and the Ogre, and--well, George Arnold, for
+instance.
+
+It was partly on account of the gathering darkness, no doubt, or partly
+because Alma wanted to look at the summer-house while Nancy and George
+wanted to continue to look at the roses, but however it was--well,
+there they were--Mr. Arnold and Miss Prescott, absorbedly looking at
+the roses.  Or perhaps they weren't even looking at the roses.
+
+"Now, look here, Nancy, if you'll be a good girl, and say what I tell
+you to, I'll give you something nice.  It's not a candy, either."
+
+"Wh-what do you want me to say?" gasped Nancy, suddenly feeling quite
+terrified.
+
+"First of all, put your hand in mine, so," he took her hand gently, and
+then lifted it to his lips.  "And now say--'I love you, George!'"
+
+"Oh--I c-can't!" whispered Nancy, feebly.
+
+"Yes, you can.  Try it, dear."
+
+"Well, don't you, Nancy?"  For the first time he sounded very grave,
+and his eyes looked anxious.  Then somehow Nancy felt quite calm and
+happy and brave, she answered him, honestly:
+
+"Yes, I do.  I love you, George."
+
+She felt him take her left hand and single out the third finger.  Then
+she felt something cool slipped on it.  She gasped.  The first diamond
+she had ever owned caught and flashed back a moonbeam.
+
+"Oh--I didn't know it was that!" she stammered.  "I would have said
+what--what you wanted me to, anyway, George.  I mean, _I_ wanted to,
+awfully."
+
+He promptly kissed her.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Nancy of Paradise Cottage, by Shirley Watkins
+
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