"Who'll go? Who'll go?" insisted Nan, tapping the floor with her foot to emphasize her impatience.

Ruth looked at Miss Blake a little sullenly, and said nothing. Miss Blake looked at Nan.

"You," she returned simply. "I was just saying to Ruth that I am sure you would not go anywhere against my plainly expressed wish."

The girl threw back her head with an unrestrained laugh.

"Oh, now, you're bragging!" she cried breezily. "Don't count too much on me. I'm a queer creature. I don't know what I'd do if I were hard put!"

Ruth glanced at Miss Blake again as she buttoned her coat. The governess' face was quite placid, but there was an expression in her eyes that was quite new to the girl and that she did not care to face.

"The fact of the matter is, Nan," Miss Blake explained, "Ruth has come here to invite you to join a sleighing party to be given—what night did you say, Ruth?"

"The first clear one," responded the girl still sullenly.

"The first clear night," resumed Miss Blake. "All your friends are going, and it would give me as much pleasure to have you join them as it would you to do so, but—under the circumstances it is impossible to do anything save—" she paused an instant, and Nan broke in impatiently:

"Under what circumstances? There aren't any circumstances! A sleighing party! Why, it'll be just magnificent and gorgeous! Of course I'll go. Hurrah! Ruth, you're a dear to ask me! Go? Well, I should think so!"

Ruth fastened her fur boa about her neck, and murmured something almost inaudible about having to hurry home.

"Well, you can count on me," cried Nan, flinging her arm about her friend's waist and escorting her to the door. "Good-bye! Thanks heaps for asking me! Las' tag!"

The front door slammed, and the girl came back to the library with her cheeks aglow and her eyes flashing. "What fun!" she exclaimed. "I know what we'll do! We'll go down to Howe's and have a supper and a jolly good time generally. Mary Brewster and Grace and Ruth had it all planned out for the next good snow, and I'd forgotten. O goody!"

Miss Blake was standing as they had left her, by the fire, with her foot upon the fender and her hand upon the high mantel-shelf. Now she took them both down and turned to Nan, saying in a low, controlled voice:

"Nan, I want to talk to you about this party. And you must hear me out, even if some of the things I am about to say do not please you." She kept her eyes on the girl's face as she spoke, and saw its expression change quickly from one of eager anticipation to one of growing apprehension and then again to one of dogged opposition. So vivid were these changes that she almost lost the necessary courage to go on, for she read in them that her task promised to be no easy one.

"Well?" said Nan, tapping her foot impatiently, as Miss Blake did not at once continue.

"Please sit down here, and I will try to say what I have to say as quickly as possible," resumed the governess, drawing a long breath.

Nan obeyed, but with a decidedly impatient fling of herself upon the low ottoman Miss Blake had indicated.

"As I said to Ruth," the low voice commenced, "under almost any other circumstances it would give me the greatest pleasure to know that you were to enjoy this sleighing party with the others. If Mrs. Andrews or Mrs. Hawes were going it would settle the question at once."

"Or if you were," suggested Nan, with a curl other lip.

Miss Blake's face paled, and for an instant she regarded Nan in a sort of surprised, hurt silence. Then she replied, steadily: "Yes, or if I were. But as it is Mrs. Cole, the case is entirely altered. Mrs. Cole is scarcely more than a girl herself, and—I say this to you, Nan, simply because I must—she has never been, to my idea, a lady-like young woman. She has always been flippant and frivolous and boisterous; anything but a good companion for a number of impulsive, impressionable girls like yourself."

"Oh, pshaw!" interrupted Nan, impatiently. "There's nothing against her at all. She's lots of fun, and a body'd be a great goose that tried to suit all the old frumps in town. She said so herself, and she's married and she knows."

A ghost of a smile flitted across Miss Blake's face. Nan's emphasis reflected so directly on her own condition of unauthoritative spinsterhood.

"If you and the other girls have no more careful a chaperone, one who will be no more of a restraint than Mrs. Cole, I am afraid the party will prove a rather uproarious one. And I cannot help thinking that this is precisely the reason Mrs. Cole has been asked to attend you; that you might not be under any restraint. I don't for a moment think any of you girls would deliberately take advantage of your liberty, but you are full of animal spirits, and when you get in full swing it is a little hard, perhaps harder than you know, to rein yourselves in. I am afraid Ruth has not been quite candid with her mother. At all events, I am sure that if Mrs. Andrews realized the circumstances she would think twice before letting Ruth go. It is not only that I think Mrs. Cole will not prove a restraint; I am afraid she will intentionally lead you on. And if she does, I am afraid your sleigh-ride will be decidedly unconventional."

"I hope we'll have a splendid time," announced Nan, setting her jaws with a snap of her teeth.

But the governess went on as if she had neither seen nor heard.

"It is very important, Nan, that you especially should not be identified with anything of the sort. It might injure you in such a way that the harm could never be repaired." She paused and Nan straightened herself with a jerk.

"I'd like to know why it's more important for me than for the other girls? If their mothers think it's good enough for them I guess it's good enough for me, and if they can be trusted I guess I can."

Miss Blake hesitated, but only for a moment. Then she went on steadily and firmly, but without the least suggestion of sternness in her voice or manner.

"The reason is simply this: You have not had the advantages the other girls have had. You have had no mother; no careful, loving training from the first, and—excuse me, dear—your behavior has shown it. How could it be expected not to do so? People have criticized you, and their criticisms have been severe, unjust even. Lately you have set yourself right with most of your neighbors, but it has been hard work, and it has been only begun. It will still be hard work to keep their good opinion. If you want to hold a place in their esteem you must earn it and keep on earning it. The other girls might do with perfect safety what you could not dream of doing, because in them it would be looked on merely as a single slip; with you it would be backsliding. Do you understand me, Nan?"

There was no reply, but the girl's bent head was answer enough. Miss Blake passed her hand tenderly over the roughened hair, and for a long time there was silence between them. Nan was thinking, and Miss Blake was content to let her think.

The tall clock in the corner tapped out the minutes with slow, even ticks. The fire burned steadily on the hearth, and the logs settled as they burned. Outside the high wind raced madly around bleak street corners, carrying the snow before it in white, blinding clouds. The air was so full of the swirling, eddying flakes that it dimmed the light and made evening seem to have settled down long before its usual time. Every now and then there came to them from the conservatory a faint, faint breath from a blossoming daphne, as though the delicate thing were breathing out sweet gratitude for its shelter from the storm.

Nan could not help responding to the quieting influence of it all. It was very, very different from the place as it used to be, and she felt the difference and the suggestiveness of it more now than she had ever done before.

Suppose the change in herself was as marked as this? Every one seemed to like her nowadays. They said she was altered and improved, and if they said so, she supposed it must be true. What, then, if she were to turn about and be her old self again?

What if Miss Blake were to give the house its old aspect again? Ugh! It was disheartening even to think of such a thing. But granting that she were to let things go back, she couldn't undo some of the improvements she had made? So it seemed reasonable to Nan that even if she let herself be as she had been for awhile, just to rest from the constant trying to be good, for a day or so, the really important changes must still remain; like the dumbwaiter and the wall paper and the frescoes and the woodwork. And, pshaw! Just going to this sleigh-ride wasn't going to prove that she was backsliding, anyway! Miss Blake was too particular—making an awful fuss over nothing. Mrs. Cole was all right enough. Lots of nice people knew her, and the girls always liked to have her around, she was so gay and jolly. And now that she was married, it was fun to have her chaperone them, for she never interfered, nor was wet-blankety, like mothers and people, no matter what was going on. In fact, she often urged them on and suggested things the girls themselves would never have thought of, so that wherever she was the fun promised to run high. It was too bad of Miss Blake to have put the case as she had. It simply meant that if Nan went she deliberately disobeyed her wish and defied her authority.

For the first time the girl seemed to get a glimpse of the tactful, tender way in which she had been guided. She saw that this was the first instance in which she had been put under definite restraint. Always before Miss Blake had left her seemingly to decide for herself, and she had never been aware of the influence that led her in the right direction.

But this was different. This was discipline, and she rose against it instantly.

If she did not go on the sleigh-ride she would only be obeying Miss Blake's injunction. There was no credit or virtue in that. There might be some satisfaction in denying one's self a pleasure if one felt one were independent, and that what one did was self-abnegating and laudable. But if one acted under compulsion—! Pooh! Nan guessed Miss Blake thought she was a mere child to be ordered about like that.

And yet, with all this, there was a strange unfamiliar tugging at her heart to confess herself willing to obey. She actually had to make an effort to keep from doing so. She scarcely knew how it happened, but all at once she became conscious that she had shaken herself together and that she was saying, in no very gracious voice to be sure, but still that she was saying, "Well, if you will have it your own way, you will I suppose. There! I promise you I won't go on the sleigh-ride. Now, does that satisfy you?"

Miss Blake took her hand from Nan's hair so hastily that the girl lifted her head in astonishment. But the governess had neither the air of being angry nor of being wounded as she feared. She simply rose and said in quite a matter-of-fact tone as she turned toward the door:

"I demanded no promise of you, Nan, and I give you back your word. Moreover, I entirely recall my injunction. Do as you please. If you decide to go you will neither be disobeying my order nor breaking your own promise. You are quite free and untrammeled, my dear."

Nan sprang to her feet.

"Huh!" she cried in an exasperated manner, "I know what you mean! You mean I am quite free to go and—take the consequences. That's what you mean."

Miss Blake paused but made no reply.

"But suppose there aren't any consequences?" pursued Nan, biting her lip and scowling darkly from between her knitted brows.

Miss Blake turned her head.

"There are always consequences," she said over her shoulder in a voice that was very low and serious.



CHAPTER XVI

THE SLEIGH-RIDE

The storm lasted for three days and then came a term of perfect weather. Under foot the snow was packed hard and tight into a compact mass over a bed of ice, and overhead the sun shone out from a cloudless sky, while the air was so keen that it kept the mercury very close to the zero mark even at midday.

"How is this for high?" demanded Ruth exultantly, as she and Nan met toward the end of the week, the first time they had seen each other since that stormy day when the subject of the sleigh-ride had first been broached to Miss Blake.

"The weather, you mean? Oh, perfectly fine!" responded Nan.

Ruth drew a step nearer to her.

"It's all arranged for to-night. Not a soul has refused; every one we've asked is going, and the sleigh is a regular old ark. We've got everything our own way. Mike, from the stables, is as solid as a brick wall. The horses are perfectly safe and we're going to have footstoves to keep our toes warm. Mrs. Cole has telephoned down to Howe's to have our supper ready, and we're going to have a simply stunning time."

Nan tried to smile, but failed, and Ruth was too full of her own affairs to notice.

"We're going to start at eight sharp. First we thought we'd pick up the party as we went along, but Mrs. Cole said it would waste too much time, so we're all going to meet at her house. I've so much on my mind my head's spinning. Be sure you're on hand at eight. We're not going to wait for any one."

"O Ruth!" faltered Nan, flinging out a detaining hand as the girl was about to go. "I'm not going. Didn't I tell you?"

Ruth stopped short and gazed at her in bewilderment.

"Not going! What on earth do you mean?"

"I can't go; that's all," stammered Nan, flushing hotly at the seeming weakness of the confession.

Ruth stared at her blankly.

"Well, I like that!" she enunciated at length.

"Why, I told you, didn't I?" asked Nan.

"Told me what? That you weren't going? Well, I should say not. Miss Blake said you couldn't but you said flat down you would, and, of course, I believed you. Don't you remember the last words you said as I went away that day were that I could count on you? And so, of course, I counted."

Nan stood and regarded the snow at her feet in silence.

"It's right-down mean to back out at the last minute when the party's all made up and the couples all arranged and you've given your word. We've been awfully careful whom we've asked, because we only wanted a certain kind—not alone a certain number. Of course, we could get lots of girls to take your place and jump at the chance; but we prefer you, and you'd given your promise."

Nan ground the snow under her foot until it squeaked.

"I thought you were sick, or something, when you didn't come around," went on Ruth, sternly. "I never imagined for a minute it was because you meant to flunk and leave us in the lurch like this. If I'd thought that I wouldn't have gone to all the trouble I did to save you a place next to John Gardiner when Mary Brewster was fighting tooth and nail to get it."

The pinched snow squeaked again under Nan's grinding heel, this time louder than before.

"It's all nonsense, Miss Blake's not wanting you to go," pursued Ruth. "Everything is as proper as pie, and if the boys get to carrying on a little too much Mrs. Cole will settle them in no time. She's real determined when she makes up her mind. What under the sun does Miss Blake think we are going to do? But that's no matter now. You gave me your word, and you've no right to go back on it. Besides, it'll set us all topsy-turvey with our accounts, for if you don't go of course you won't turn in your share of the tax, and we couldn't ask any one at the last minute just to come as a make-shift and expect her to pay for the privilege. The end of it will be the rest of us will have to make it up, and if you think that's fair I don't!"

"I'll gladly pay my dues," returned Nan, more meekly than Ruth had ever heard her speak. "You can ask any one you choose as my substitute, and say anything you please to explain my not going, and I'll stand by you."

This began to sound serious, and Ruth felt it was time to clinch her argument.

"If you go out Louie Hawes will, too. Her mother said she'd let Lu go if Miss Blake would let you, but that if Miss Blake objected she thought it would be best not to have Lu join. She said she made Lu's going entirely conditional on yours. So, you see, if you back out you'll not alone be breaking your promise, but you'll be breaking up the party and making a mess of it all round. I told Mrs. Hawes you were going, and Lu's heart is set on it. If she has to stay back now, at the last minute like this, it will disappoint her dreadfully, and I wouldn't blame her if she never spoke to you again."

Nan felt that she had been driven into a corner, and that there was but one way out of it. In spite of her strong desire to go with the girls, she had determined to stick to her resolve to stay behind. She had hardly known why she had tried to avoid them all these days. But now she knew. It was because she was afraid they would shake her resolution. Once she would have called herself cowardly for trying to spare herself such temptation, but now she knew better; she saw she had been simply wise. It would not have been brave, but merely reckless, to have done otherwise. She had known ever since Miss Blake spoke that she was free to do as she pleased. That she was held by no promise; that she was compelled by no stronger claim than Miss Blake's disapproval, which might be, after all, only a groundless personal prejudice, she thought. She hardly realized why she felt bound to obey. And now along came Ruth to prove that there were other claims outside Miss Blake's. She remembered perfectly having said that Ruth could count on her. Here was a very definite promise, although it had been made in half-ignorance, and she understood clearly that Ruth meant to make her keep it. Then, again, she was directly responsible for Louie's disappointment, and this seemed to her, as Ruth had intended it should seem, a compelling conclusion. If she had been older her reasoning would not have stopped here, but, as it was, she perceived only two sides to the question, and this that Ruth had just presented seemed infinitely more convincing than the one Miss Blake had tried to make clear to her. Ruth's logic she could understand; the governess' seemed vague and incomprehensible. In one case she had been coerced into making a promise from which she had later been absolved; in the other she had given her word of her own free will, and she was being stoutly held to it. There were other influences at work, but Nan did not know it. She honestly believed she was waiving all considerations but those with which her duty was concerned, and she thought she had done so when she broke out with a sort of impatient groan:

"Oh, dear! I never saw such a tangle!"

"Well," returned Ruth grimly, "I don't know anything about that, but whatever it may be, I've got the strong end of the line and I mean to hold it. You've just got to go and that's all there is to it."

Nan gave a rueful laugh. She more than half-liked to have Ruth leave her no alternative. It somehow made her seem less responsible to herself. If the decision were taken out of her hands she could not be held accountable and—the enjoyment would be there all the same.

"I wish you'd let me off, Ruth," she protested weakly, as a sort of last sop to her conscience.

Ruth saw that she had prevailed and gave her head a triumphant toss. "Well, I won't, so there! And what's more I can't stand here wasting time like this another minute. I have a hundred things to do before eight o'clock, so good-bye! Be sure you're on time for we won't wait a second, and if you don't arrive none of us will ever speak to you again, so there!"

Nan stood dumbly stubbing her toe into a little mound of snow quite a minute after Ruth had left her. She had not even glanced up when, in response to her friend's last declaration, she had said, "Very well; I'll be on hand," and her voice had sounded so flat and lifeless that Ruth thought it better to hasten off before the words could be recalled. When Nan spoke in that half-hearted tone Ruth had no faith in her strength of purpose. She walked home in a doubtful frame of mind, wondering if, after all, the promise would be kept.

But Nan had no such misgivings. She knew perfectly well that she was "in for it" now, but, strange to say, she felt no exultation in the prospect.

"Oh, dear!" she snapped out peevishly, with a last vicious dig of her heel into the snow, "every bit of enjoyment is taken out of it, I never saw anything so provoking, in the whole of my life. If Miss Blake only hadn't been so mean, I might have been spared all this fret and bother and been just as jolly as any of them. But how can a person have a good time when they know there's some one at home pulling a long face and making one feel as if one were breaking all the laws. It's just too bad, that's what it is."

But Miss Blake neither "pulled a long face" nor by any other means tried to impress Nan with a sense of her disapproval. She took her decision quietly, and made no comment upon it one way or the other. But when it neared dressing time, and the girl had gone to her room to prepare, she tapped gently for admittance and came in, bearing in her hand a coquettish sealskin hood which she generously offered to Nan, saying:

"It's bitterly cold, and I know you won't want to tie a comforter about your ears. If you will wear this I shall be only too happy to lend it to you. See, the cape is so full and deep your chest and back can't get chilled, and it is not at all clumsy, as so many of them are. Try it on. I think it will be becoming and I know it will keep you warm."

Nan was at a loss for words. Miss Blake had none of the air of heaping coals of fire on her head, but just for a second the girl suspected her of it and hung back reluctantly. Then she looked into the frank, honest eyes and all her suspicion vanished.

"You're—you're awfully kind," she stammered, hastily.

"Try it on," repeated Miss Blake, cordially.

Nan took the soft, warm thing by its rich brown ribbons and, setting it snugly on her head, tied the strings into a big broad bow beneath her chin.

"It's not so unbecoming!" commented the governess, observing Nan critically with her head on one side.

Nan looked in the mirror. What she saw there was the reflection of a flushed, excited face with keen, young eyes that were just now unusually large and bright. Sundry riotous tendrils of hair had escaped from their restraining combs and were flying loose at the temples, and, framing all, was a circle of dusky, flattering fur which lent a look of softness and roundness to the firm, square chin and rose above the brow in a quaint, coquettish peak which was vastly graceful and becoming.

"O Miss Blake!" cried Nan, her eyes flashing with pleasure, "isn't it the darlingest thing? And as warm as toast! I'll be ever and ever so careful of it. You're awfully good to lend it to me. But I really think I oughtn't to take it. Something might happen; it might get lost."

"Don't give it another thought," Miss Blake said, kindly. "Just wear it and keep warm and comfortable. You must take the gloves, too. They will keep your fingers cozy."

So Nan set out looking like a young Russian in her borrowed furs and feeling what satisfaction she might in the consciousness that she was appearing, if not behaving, at her best.

She found most of the party already assembled at Mrs. Cole's and as the door was opened to her, a loud chorus of shouting laughter met her ears and she was laid hold of by a dozen hands and dragged forward under the gaslight.

"Pooh!" shrieked the chorus again. "This one's easy enough! Nan Cutler! first guess," and she was released as hurriedly as she had been set upon, while the entire company fell upon a later comer and tried to discover the identity of the muffled, veiled individual before she had either spoken or recovered from the unexpected onslaught.

"Well, Nan," cried Harley Morris, jovially, "you're the only girl who isn't muffled out of all recognition. We've had a dandy time trying to identify some of them."

"I never saw you look so well," declared Louie Hawes, generously, with her eyes glued to the fascinating peak.

"Nor I," broke in Mary Brewster. "Really, I didn't know you at first. That hood is as disguising to you as our veils are to us."

Nan flushed, but made no response. Harley Morris gave a low whistle and strolled off to join John Gardiner, who was standing before the fire talking with grave-faced Mr. Cole, and as he went she heard him murmur under his breath:

"Sweet remark! Oh, these dear girl friends!"

It instantly changed her feeling from momentary resentment toward Mary to pity for her.

All at once Mrs. Cole's shrill treble was heard high above the hum and murmur of the other voices, crying:

"Now, girls and boys, time's almost up! It any of the party's missing, he or she will be left behind! Prompt's the word."

Then, stepping over to her husband, she tapped him lightly on the shoulder and said:

"There now, Tom, I'm glad we're going, for you're looking as solemn as an owl. Cheer up and have a lovely time with your book and that jolly fire, and don't forget to go to bed at nine o'clock like a good little boy."

Mary Brewster laughed, and most of the others joined in her merriment. But Mr. Cole looked so troubled and stern that Nan, who was gazing at him from the corners of her eyes, saw no reason to laugh at his wife's sally, but felt a much greater inclination to cry for pity of him and his anxious face.

Suddenly she was roused from her musing by John Gardiner's voice close at her ear.

"Nan!" he said.

"Oh, heyo, John!"

"I want to tell you something," he went on, nervously, in a hesitating whisper. "From the looks of her, Mrs. Cole means to carry things with a high hand to-night. Hope we won't come to grief. Sometimes the motto is 'everything goes,' and then it isn't so easy to hold back and stand for the things you ought to. I depend on you, Nan, to keep a level head, for some of us'll have to act as ballast or we'll all go under."

Nan's face glowed with gratification. "All right, John," she responded staunchly, and then, Mrs. Cole giving the signal, in an instant the roomful seemed to fling itself helter-skelter to the hall-door, fastening boas and mufflers as it went, all eager and breathless to be off. There was a deal of laughing and exclaiming, shrieking and protesting as the girls were bundled, one after another, into the sleigh.

"Is this you, Lu?"

"Yes. O dear! I have lost my veil. No, here it is, dragged under my chin."

"I thought I was to sit next to you, Nan!"

"Oh, that's all right, Mary's there, and it's too late to change now. No matter."

John Gardiner leaped up.

"I say there, Mike, hold your horses for a second. Would you mind moving down a place, Mary? Thanks! Mrs. Cole said I was to sit next to Nan, and as we are all under her orders to-night I'm bound to obey. There! this is what I call festive! 'A thorn between two roses,' eh?" and he settled himself comfortably between the two girls with a great, hearty laugh and a final "Ready!" at which word the horses started into a brisk trot. Their bells broke into a silver chime; the sleigh swept smoothly over the glaze of snow, and the evening's fun began.

Some one had brought a tin horn, and this was blown with such a vim that conversation was impossible. But remarks and retorts were shouted from one side to the other, and the tamest of them brought forth peals of laughter.

The heaven above them was densely black, and out of it flashed innumerable stars like sparks white-hot and quivering with inward fire. But the wind that swept across the sky was so cold that it made it seem to contract and retreat and leave the shivering world an inconceivable depth below.

Swathed and bundled as they were, the girls very soon began to feel the deadly chill in the icy air.

"Nan's shivering like an ash-pan!" John cried out suddenly. "Has anybody got an extra shawl or something they can lend her?"

"Hush!" returned the girl, trying to control her trembling, "it's nothing; I'm all right."

"Pity she can't keep warm with John Gardiner beside her!" Mrs. Cole suggested.

In the shadow Nan's teeth came together with a snap of disgust. She saw now what it was in Mrs. Cole that offended Miss Blake. She had never noticed it before, but it had been there, and she knew it. John made no retort, while the others laughed and applauded.

"Here, Nan!" spoke up some one at the other end of the sleigh, "here's a cigarette. Take it and warm yourself before its genial blaze," and it was passed along from hand to hand, its ruddy point glinting out in the shadow as it went along. When it came to Mary, instead of handing it on at once, she held it a moment, then suddenly raised it to her lips.

"Hey, there! Turn off the draught!" cried its owner merrily at sight of the newly-glowing tip.

"Shut down the damper!" shouted some one else.

"I dare you to smoke it!" laughed Mrs. Cole.

Mary deliberately took a long puff.

Nan leaned back behind John and laid her gloved hand impulsively on Mary's shoulder. "O Mary!" she protested in a whisper. "Don't. Please! It'll make you sick."

But the girl was not to be thwarted. She shook off Nan's hand impatiently.

"Mind your own business!" she replied, and took another puff.

On they swept through the icy air, across the snow-covered country, amid the white night. The horn blew; the voices sang and shouted, and finally the sleigh swung up before the hospitable road-house, where every window was alight and their steaming supper awaited them.

It was harder to get out of the sleigh than it had been to get in it, for joints that at first had been limber and strong were now stiff and cramped from cold and disuse, and the girls made a sorry show, limping and halting from the sleigh to the house. When Nan first gained the ground she could hardly stand, but a little vigorous exercise soon sent the blood tingling through her veins again and unknotted her muscles, and she was about to run gayly up the path when she felt a hand upon her shoulder, and looking round saw Mary Brewster beside her, her face ghastly and drawn in the pallid moonlight and her chin quivering weakly in a manner that Nan saw at once was not the effect of the cold.

"Lean on my shoulder and I'll get you up to the house in a jiff," she said, in a low whisper.

Mary clung to her, wavering and faint, without a word, and in the confusion no one noticed her plight. Nan had fairly to drag her up the steps, and then again up the staircase to the room the woman of the place had showed them when Nan had drawn her aside and told her of their dilemma.

"It's the cold!" gasped Mary, crying abjectly between her spasms of misery.

"No such thing!" returned Nan stoutly. "It's that villainous cigarette. But never mind now. There! Don't think of anything but getting better. I'll stroke your head for you. It must be aching terribly."

So she soothed and comforted the girl as best she could, and the kind mistress of the house came up every now and then with offers of help and reports of how the supper was progressing below, and after a while Mary grew quieter and could do something beside moan and cry and wring her hands over her own wretchedness.

"Nan," she whispered presently in a conscious-smitten voice, "I want you to leave me and go down stairs. You've given up the best part of the fun for me, but you shan't lose it all. Please go down!"

Nan shook her head. "No, you don't, ma'am!" she declared cheerfully, and Mary was too exhausted to argue the question. She felt deliciously drowsy and the freedom from pain made her tearfully happy. Vague, dreamy thoughts were wandering through her brain, and one of them was that Nan had been very kind to her. She had not deserved it. She had been mean to Nan. She admitted it. She ought to beg her forgiveness. It was so good to be out of pain that she was willing to do anything to prove her gratitude. She opened her eyes and saw Nan bending over her with a face full of sympathy. She put up her hands and drew the face down to hers, her lip trembling like a little child's.

"Kiss me, Nan!"

Nan kissed her.

"I want you to forgive me. I've been hateful to you and you've been generous and kind and—I love you for it. I'd like to be your friend—if you'd let me, after the way I've treated you."

Nan kissed her again. "Never mind that now. We'll begin all over, and I guess I can behave a little better myself. Now go to sleep and get a good nap before it's time to go home."



CHAPTER XVII

CONSEQUENCES

As soon as she saw that Mary had fallen soundly asleep Nan rose and slipped noiselessly down stairs. She had no trouble in finding the supper-room, for she had only to follow the echoing sounds to be led directly to the door. She stood a moment on the threshold before she laid her hand upon the knob. It seemed to her she had never heard such a hub-bub, but as she listened she seemed to hear, over and above it all, Miss Blake's soft voice saying quietly:

"If you and the other girls have no more careful a chaperone than Mrs. Cole, I am afraid your party will prove a rather uproarious one."

"Rather uproarious!" Nan smiled, as she repeated the words to herself. Then she turned the knob and pushed open the door.

The clamor surged louder than ever, and for a second seemed almost to stun her. Dishes were clattering, and every one seemed doing his or her best to add to the tumult and confusion. No one noticed Nan standing dumbly in the doorway, and it was only when some one's eye fell upon her as she took a step or two forward that there was a cry of "Hullo! Here's Nan!" and she was pulled to the table, forced into a chair, and plied with all sorts of dishes and questions, until she put her hands to her ears and begged for mercy.

"Here's some salad! Take this!"

"The jelly's most gone and what's left of it is melted. But you're welcome to it such as it is and what there is of it."

"Where have you been all this time?"

"We've been calling you every sort of a name for being so rude as to stay away from the supper."

"Oh, Nan had her good reason," shouted Mrs. Cole, pushing back her chair and springing to her feet.

"Come, girls and boys!" she cried shrilly, "it's getting late. If we want to dance we'd better be about it."

Of course that led to a general uprising, and in a moment the whole tableful was swarming toward the parlor.

"How do you like it, Nan?" asked John Gardiner, quizzically, coming and leaning toward her to whisper the question in her ear, as they stood at one side waiting for the music to begin.

"Like it!" repeated Nan, "I think Mrs. Cole's simply—well, I'm sorry she was ever asked to come. It would all have been so different if we had had Mrs. Andrews or Mrs. Hawes or—just imagine Miss Blake acting as she has to-night!"

"I can't imagine it!" returned John, emphatically, "and worse yet, Mike is in no condition to drive us home. He's been drinking. I went out to see if the horses were all right and being fed, you know, and there I heard about it. Mike simply mustn't drive."

Nan pressed her hands together and gave a stifled groan.

"That's what I wanted to tell you," continued John, hurriedly. "It isn't safe to let him try and I'm going to take his place myself. I don't know how long I can stand it, for it's colder than ever and I haven't any driving gloves, but I'll do the best I can and perhaps some of the other fellows will lend a hand."

Nan thought a minute. "I tell you what," she declared at last, "I'm going to do part of the driving myself. I'll sit up front and when you give out I'll lend a hand and we'll get through somehow. I've Miss Blake's gloves and they are as warm as toast."

The anxious look faded a little from John's face, and in spite of himself he showed he was relieved. "I may not have to give up at all," he said at length; "but if I do there's not a fellow in the whole lot I'd rather trust the reins to than you. Come! They're making a move. Get your things on as quick as you can and be where I can see you so we can take our places without making too much talk."

In a twinkling Nan had flown upstairs, roused Mary and helped her to get ready and was hooded and cloaked and standing in the hall-way. The others came up one by one and presently the big door was opened and they trooped through it out into the waiting sleigh. John gave Nan a hand and she sprang quickly to the place beside him on the driver's seat. They started.

It proved a very different matter sitting on that unsheltered box facing the wind to cuddling, as they had done before, among the warm straw with their faces shielded from the current by the high protecting sides of the sleigh, and after a very little while Nan had to set her teeth to keep from crying out for the pain in her stinging cheeks.

Back of them the rest of the party shouted and tootled and yodeled as cheerfully as ever. Every one wanted to know what had become of Mike, and as nobody could tell but John and Nan, and they wouldn't, the questions went unanswered, and by and by the subject was dropped and only occasional spiteful jokes made by Mrs. Cole at the expense of John's driving and Nan's sitting beside him while he did it.

Happily the horses knew the way home and were eager to get there, so they did not have to be urged or guided. But it was necessary to hold a tight rein, and John's hands soon began to feel tortured and twisted with the strain upon them biting through their numbness like screws of pain. He shook his head determinedly when Nan offered to relieve him, and at last she had to wrench the reins from him in order to take her share of duty and give him a chance to recover a little.

So, taking turns faithfully like good comrades, and exchanging never a word, they got the sleigh and its load safely into town at last, and not one of the gay, irresponsible party knew how difficult an achievement it had been.

Miss Blake herself opened the door to Nan and let her in. One glance at her, as she stood huddled and quivering with cold in the vestibule, was enough. Not a question was asked. She was led gently into the warm dining-room, her hood and cloak taken from her and her frozen hands briskly chafed, while on Miss Blake's tea-stand stood her little brass kettle, bubbling and purring merrily above its alcohol flame, and hinting broadly at soothing cups of something "grateful and comforting."

Nan let herself be waited upon in a sort of half dream. The agony in her hands had been so great that it had taken all her strength to bear it, and now it was going she felt weak and babyish.

"O dear!" she broke down at last, with a gulp of relief. "It's been an awful evening! Mrs. Cole was detestable. Do you know what she did?" and then came out the whole story pell-mell: all told in Nan's blunt, uncompromising way, and giving Miss Blake a better idea than anything else could have done of just how right she had been in opposing the girl's going under such chaperon age.

She was too wise to say "I told you so," and she was too sincere to try to gloss over the probable result of the episode. She looked grave and thoughtful when Nan had finished her account, and her voice was very serious as she said:

"What the consequences to the others may be I don't know; I dread to think. But I feel that at least you and John and Mary have seen things as they are, and will profit by your experience. You remember the talk we had at Mrs. Newton's before the holidays? She said 'Experience is an expensive school, and only fools can afford to go to it,' or something like that; you are no fool, Nan. I think you will see more and more plainly, as time goes on, that there are some things that we cannot afford to do. We cannot afford to buy a momentary pleasure at the price of a lifetime of regret, and we cannot afford to spend even one day of our life in unscrupulous company. It costs too much. We think we have a very keen business sense, we men and women, but we allow ourselves to be cheated every day we live in a way that would disgust us if we were dealing in dollars and cents. Self-respect is more valuable than momentary enjoyment, yet those boys and girls sold one for the other to-night.

"As for you, I think you made a good exchange, Nan, when you gave up your supper for Mary's sake. Love is a reliable bank, dear, and you can't make too many deposits in it. It always pays compound interest, and the best of it is, it never fails."

Nan's lips opened as if she were about to speak, but she closed them again, and sat looking into the fire very seriously and silently for some time. Then the lips parted again, and this time the words came, though even now with an effort:

"I guess you'll think it's no credit to me that I'm sorry I went. But I am sorry, and I would be if it had been the best time in the world. I didn't want to go, really, after you said you'd—rather I wouldn't. I didn't, honestly. It won't do either of us any good for me to say now that I wish I had done as you wanted me to. But I do wish it. I've hated myself all along for acting as I did. Now don't let's say anything more about it—but—but—I wanted you to know how I feel."

There was an ominous catch in her voice that warned Miss Blake not to pursue the subject. Nan could humble herself to apologize, but to follow the abasement up by shedding tears on it was too much for her dignity, and she fought against it stolidly.

But the governess knew her well enough by this time to feel assured that what she said was true, and she accepted the clumsy, halting "amende" as gratefully as if it had been the most graceful of acknowledgments.

"Dear me," she broke in, in quite a matter-of-fact way. "Do you know that the small hours are getting to be large hours, and we are sitting here as unconcernedly as if it were just after dinner. Come, let us both get upstairs and to bed as fast as our feet can carry us," and she promptly set the example by extinguishing the lamp and helping Nan to shoulder her armful of wraps.

"Oh, by the way," she said, as they readied the upper hall, and the girl was about to make return of the hood, "you may keep it if you will. Accept it and the gloves, with my love, as a sort of recompense for what other things you have missed this evening."

Nan was too overcome by the richness of the gift to make any response at all for a moment. Then she blurted out awkwardly, though in a very grateful voice:

"You're so good to me it makes me—ashamed. You're always giving me things. It isn't right. You give away everything you have."

Miss Blake lifted her chin and laughed gayly over the cleft in it.

"No, I don't," she returned, tip-toeing to drop the gloves, like a blessing, on the girl's head. "I have one or two things which I keep all for myself. But if I like to give presents, do you know what it's a sign of? It's a sign I'm poor. Poor people are always possessed by a passion for giving presents. It's true! I've always noticed it! Good-night!"

And that was the last Nan heard about the affair from Miss Blake. Unfortunately—or fortunately—it was not the last she heard of it from others, by any means. It was a long, long time before it was allowed to drop.

In the first place, Michael was discharged from the stables, and this led to a vast amount of discussion, for the poor fellow, who was temperate by nature, was thrown out of employment in midwinter, and his predicament seemed a pitiable one to those who really understood the facts in the case.

Miss Blake, when she heard of the affair, had bidden John Gardiner bring the man to her. She heard his story, and then sent him off with a few kindly, encouraging words, and the poor fellow felt comforted in spite of the facts that she had given him neither money nor any definite promise of help. When he had gone she sat for some time thinking busily, her chin in her palms and her elbows propped on the desk in front of her. She was still for so long that John and Nan stole off after a while and tried experiments with the kodak on some back-yard views, and when they came back to Miss Blake's room to ask her opinion on some point of focus they found the place deserted and the governess gone.

The next day Mike was discovered sitting smilingly enthroned in his accustomed place on the lofty box of the livery "broom-carriage," and he vouchsafed the information to congratulating friends that: "Ut's another chanct Oi hav, though how Oi come boy ut ye'll niver know anny moar than Oi do mesilf, for Misther Allen was that set agin me he wuddn't hear a wurrud Oi'd sa'. But Oi have another chanct and ut's mesilf 'll see till ut, ut lasts me me loife-toime."

"O dear!" complained Ruth to Nan, "I never want to hear the name of sleigh-ride again so long as I live. Everywhere I go, they say so significantly: 'We hear you had a very gay time the other night! Well, well! such things wouldn't have been tolerated when I was young!' and then they make some cutting remark about Mrs. Cole, and I'm afraid it's not going to be very pleasant for her after this, for none of our fathers and mothers want to have anything more to do with her. They say her example has been so bad. And one can't have a bit of fun nowadays, for we're all being kept on short rations to pay up for the other night."

But as the weeks passed the gossip died away and then every one breathed freer again.

Latterly Nan was filling her part of the household contract with considerably less ill-will than she had shown at the beginning, but even now there were occasional lamentations when the day was especially enticing, and her spirits rose and soared above the pettiness of bed-making and the degradation of dusting. It took her about twice as long to get through with her share of the work as it took Miss Blake, and she could never console herself with the thought that it was because the governess shirked. Occasionally she let her own tasks go "with a lick and a promise," as Delia described it, bat when she saw the thoroughness with which Miss Blake did even the least important thing she had the grace to be ashamed and to determine on a better course in the future. But before she really settled down to a stricter habit of conscientiousness something happened that gave her more of an impulse than a course of lectures would have done.

The winter had been a long and unusually severe one, but by March it seemed reasonable to suppose that its backbone was broken. Nan had preferred the care of the conservatory to the duller and less interesting work of dish-washing, and Miss Blake, in letting her take her choice, had only exacted the promise that her charge was not to be neglected. Nan had, as we know, given her hand upon it, and so the matter stood. The governess never "nagged" her about her duties; she took it for granted that the girl would honorably keep her word.

And indeed for some time she was tolerably thorough, watering the plants and loosening the soil about their roots; sponging the leaves of the rubber trees and palms and picking off all the shriveled leaves and faded petals from the flowering shrubs and keeping the temperature at as nearly the right degree as was possible with such varying weather and their simple device for heating the place.

But she found it was much more of a tax than she had first supposed. At the start plants had seemed so much more inviting than dishes that she had appropriated the care of them at once, and now that she discovered what her selection really involved she felt almost aggrieved, and was inclined to be cross when she saw Miss Blake's tasks finished for the day while her own was scarcely more than begun.

"Provoking things!" she would declare as she dashed a double spray of water on the rubber trees that did not need it, and gave but a mere sprinkle to the blossoming azalias that did: "if I'd known what a nuisance you were I can tell you I never would have taken you! Here! will you come off, or won't you?" and she would give some wilted blossom a vicious jerk that would set the entire plant shaking in its pot as though it were trembling with distress at the rough treatment it was receiving. If Miss Blake heard her she gave no sign. Sometimes when they passed a florist's window she would stop and look wistfully in at the bewildering display, and Nan would know that she was longing to go in and buy some especially fascinating orchid or unusually rare crysanthemum. But she would not yield to her impulse, for on one occasion the girl had said with a shrug of impatience:

"For goodness' sake don't get any more. It's all I can do to attend to the bothersome things now. I wish they were all in Hong Kong—every one of them."



So since then there had been no further additions to the conservatory, and Miss Blake had to check her horticultural ardor or confine it to her window-sill upstairs.

But the plants throve in spite of their ungracious nursing, and when she was not irritated by them Nan was very proud of the fine showing they made.

"I think that double, white azalia is one of most beautiful things I ever saw: so pure and delicate!" said Mary Brewster to Miss Blake, hanging over it in honest admiration one leaden-skied day when she come to carry Nan off to her house to dinner and was waiting while the girl went upstairs to get ready.

"Yes," replied the governess, "I love it! But then, I love all the dear things—even those poor woolly-leaved little primroses that have almost less charm for me than any flowers I know. I'm so glad they are all doing so well. I can't bear to bring a plant into the house and then have it die. It seems almost like murder. But now I must run away. I have an appointment with my dentist at three. It is very good of you to ask Nan to dinner to-night, and I'm doubly glad it happens as it does, for she would have to dine alone if she stayed at home, for I have to go out of town on business and cannot get back tonight. Delia will call for Nan at nine o'clock. Good-bye, and have a pleasant evening!" and she caught up her satchel and was off in a twinkling.

But after she had let herself out of the front door she came back and called Nan to the head of the stairs.

"It's bitterly cold," she said. "I had no idea it was so severe! Be sure you wrap up warmly, Nan, and don't forget your gloves and leggings when you come home. Oh, and the plants! You'll not fail to look after them when you get in—the last thing before you go to bed? I think it will freeze to-night, and they will need extra heat. Now, good-bye again, and God bless you!"

Nan waved her a vigorous adieu with the towel she held in her hand, and this time the governess was off in earnest.

The two girls followed her out not long after, and went laughing and chatting down the street.

"I've asked Grace and Lu and Ruth to come in after dinner, and we're going to have a candy-pull. I didn't ask John, but I told him what was up, and he said he and Harley and Everett had been wanting to call for some time, and as I'd be sure to be in, he thought they might as well do it to-night. I told him he'd have to 'call' loud, for we'd be in the kitchen, and probably wouldn't hear him, and he said he'd see to it that we did; so I suppose we'll have them too."

Among them all it proved a gay evening, and seemed unusually so, for of late jollifications had been rare. As Ruth said, "they were all kept on short rations to pay up for the other night."

It appeared to Nan when Delia arrived that she had made a mistake in the hour, and had appeared at eight instead of nine; but as it happened Delia purposely delayed in order that her girl might have an extra sixty minutes, and when she pointed to the clock, whose short hand pointed to ten, Nan could only shake her head, and say: "Well, I suppose so—but it doesn't seem as if it could be."

It was so cold that Delia had brought an additional wrap for her, and the girl was glad to avail herself of it when she felt the nip of the freezing air.

"Why, it's much worse than it was this afternoon," she said. "If this is spring, I'd just as lief have winter. I tell you what it is, Delia, it won't take me long to tumble into bed. I'm frozen stiff already. I hope you locked up before you came out, so all we'll have to do will be to go upstairs. I hate to putter about in the cold."

It seemed strange to go to bed without Miss Blake's cheery "Good-night!" ringing in her ears. It was the first time the governess had spent a night away from home since she first came to the house, almost six months ago, and Nan devoutly hoped there wouldn't be a repetition of the performance in another half-year. Her empty room gave one "les homeseeks."

In order to forget it and to escape the cold, Nan cut short her preparations for the night and got into bed with as little delay as possible. She cuddled comfortably between her smooth sheets and soft blankets and in a moment was soundly asleep.

When she waked the next morning it was with a vague feeling of responsibility, as though she had gone to sleep with a weight of some calamity on her heart. As she dressed she tried to recall it but there was nothing in yesterday's experience to depress her and she ran down to breakfast determined to shake off the haunting impression. But all through the meal it clung to her and she could not get rid of it. To be especially virtuous in Miss Blake's absence and show her that she was "dependable," she took the dish-washing upon herself and got through with it speedily. Then up to her room to set that in order, and then down to the conservatory to attend to the plants.

It was just as this juncture that Delia heard a wild cry of distress ring through the house. She ran upstairs in a fright and found Nan standing at the threshold of the conservatory door gazing in and wringing her hands. The sight that met her eyes was a pitiful one. There was not one plant among them all that had outlived the night. The leaves of all were frozen black.



CHAPTER XVIII

"CHESTER NEWCOMB"

"Oh, do you think I could?" demanded Nan, eagerly.

Miss Blake considered a moment. "I don't see any reason why it might not be arranged."

"It's right by the sea and Ruth says they never fuss about clothes down there. Just anything will do."

The governess smiled. "Nevertheless I think you will need a couple of changes. I have sometimes been asked to visit country houses where 'anything would do,' and I've generally found that it all depends on what one understands by 'anything.'"

"I can wear a shirt-waist in the morning and in the afternoon I can wear a—a—another one," announced Nan.

Miss Blake laughed. "You poor child," she said, "I do believe you haven't much beside for the summer."

"You see," broke in Nan, shamefacedly, "Delia didn't know anything about styles and I didn't—care, and so we sort of let clothes go. It isn't because father wouldn't want me to have nice things."

Miss Blake took her up quickly. "I know it is not. And now we must set to work at once to get you properly provided, for you are old enough now to 'care,' not necessarily about styles, but certainly about making a creditable appearance, and I want you to have a suitable wardrobe so that you may always keep yourself tidy."

It seemed to Nan that the wardrobe Miss Blake proceeded to provide for her was something more than merely "tidy." The frocks were simple, it is true, but very dainty and tasteful, and in her new interest in them and the way they were made she quite forgot to complain at the extra inch or two which the governess caused to be added to the length of the skirts.

There had been some stormy scenes when the winter dresses were being made, Nan insisting that she would not wear "such horrid dangling things that were forever getting in her way." She wanted her skirts made short, and if she couldn't have her skirts made short, etc.

The skirts had not been made short, and these were even longer. Clad in them Nan looked very tall and womanly, and Delia realized for the first time that her "baby" had ceased to be a little girl.

So at last the preparations were completed and the girl started off to spend a fortnight with Ruth at the Andrews' beautiful summer home by the sea. Then came gay times. Early morning dips in the surf; clam-bakes on the beach; long, lazy hours spent on the veranda, when the day was too warm for exercise, and when it was cooler, fine spins along the hard, white sand, for miles beside the shimmering sea.

Nan grew as brown as an Indian, for she scorned shade-hats, and oftenest had nothing on her head at all but her own thick thatch of riotous brown hair.

Ruth's brother taught Nan to swim, and she entered into it with so much zest that to his surprise he found his only difficulty lay in trying to restrain her. Nothing seemed to daunt her, and whatever any one else did she immediately wanted to try.

"The fact of the matter is," young Mr. Andrews declared one day, "you ought to have been a boy. You'd make a capital fellow."

"I know it," admitted Nan, frankly. "I love boys' sports and pranks, and to think that all my life I've just got to 'sit on a cushion and sew up a seam.' It's perfectly awful."

"Fancy!" exclaimed Miss Webster, a fellow-guest, and a young lady whom, by the way, Nan regarded with a good deal of disdain, because she seemed what John Gardiner called "girly-girly," and was flirtatious. "Fancy! Why, I wouldn't be a man for anything in the world! Just think what hideous clothes they wear."

"Thank you, Miss Webster," retorted Mr. Andrews with mock solemnity.

"Oh, I didn't mean you," she returned with an emphasis and a soft glance of the eyes. "You really dress extremely well. I adore your neck-ties and your boots are dreams."

Helen Andrews tried to hide a scowl of irritation. Alice Webster was her friend, and she disliked having her display herself in her worst light. She knew her to be a warm-hearted, honorable girl whose gravest fault, which, after all, might be only a foible, was her tendency to turn coquettish when she was in the society of gentlemen.

Ruth rose and beckoned Nan to follow her.

"Isn't she a lunatic?" she demanded, as soon as they were out of ear-shot.

"Perfect idiot!" responded Nan. "I should think your brother would just duck her in the water some fine day when she's making those sheep's eyes at him. I would if I were in his place."

"Oh, he doesn't care. He thinks she's lots of fun. Besides, he's going away to-morrow, and won't see her again unless Helen makes her stay longer."

"What'll she do for some one to make eyes at?"

"Don't know. Helen generally has a lot of company, but just now there seems to be a famine in the land!"

Suddenly Nan stood stock still.

"What's the matter?" demanded Ruth.

Nan waited a moment, and then bent over and whispered something in her ear.

"Magnificent! We'll do it!" cried Ruth, clapping her hands, and breaking into a peal of laughter.

"Not to-night—while your brother is here!" protested Nan.

"Of course not. To-morrow though, sure. Carl will be gone and the coast clear, and meanwhile we'll drill."

For the remainder of the day the girls were absorbed in something which took them to their room and kept them there, and they only appeared when dinner was announced, and the family already seated at the table.

"Well, Miss Nan," Carl Andrews exclaimed, "I wish you were a boy, and I'd take you up into the mountains with me and teach you how to handle a gun."

"What fun!" cried Nan.

"Yes, it would be great sport, and I warrant you'd like camp-life, too. It's just the sort of thing that you'd enjoy. Only I'm afraid it would agree with you so well that you would grow an inch a week, and considering you are a girl you'd better not get any taller."

"O dear! Don't say that," groaned Nan, "for I probably shall grow lots more as it is. You see I'm not quite sixteen yet. Do people ever get their growth before they are sixteen, Mrs. Andrews?"

"Oh, sometimes," replied the lady kindly. "I scarcely think you will grow any more, my dear. But I wouldn't worry about it in any case if I were you."

"But I don't want to tower over everybody," wailed the girl. "Just think, I'm head and shoulders above Miss Blake now!"

"But Miss Blake is a 'pocket Venus!' Just as high as one's heart," said Carl Andrews. "I took her home the other night and she barely reached to my shoulder."

"Then you and Nan must be about the same height!" said Helen.

Nan made a grimace.

"Good rye grows high!" quoted Miss Webster, good-naturedly. And then the elder Mr. Andrews, who was a little deaf, began to talk about the crops, probably thinking they had been discussing grain, since he heard the word "rye."

Early the next morning Carl Andrews started off, and the family waved him a vigorous good-bye from the veranda steps, and after he had gone the different members of the household went about their own particular business, and did not meet again until luncheon-time.

It proved an unusually warm day, and when evening came the young people were glad to sit quietly on the veranda in the dark and enjoy the heartening breeze that swept up from the sea. Mr. and Mrs. Andrews had gone, as was their custom, out driving immediately after dinner, and so the four girls were left to themselves. They were just laughing over Ruth's description of one of Nan's exploits when the maid appeared bearing a letter on a salver.

"For Miss Cutler," she said, and handed it to Nan.

The girl excused herself and hastened indoors to read it. A moment later she called to Ruth.

"It may be news from home," surmised Helen. "I hope it's nothing serious. Her father is away; has been for two years or more. I believe they expect him home this fall," and then she and Alice fell to talking of other things and Helen was just wishing Carl could see her friend in this mood, and know how womanly and sensible she could be when suddenly they both stopped talking at the sight of a man's figure coming up the long pathway from the outer road.

"Who can it be?" whispered Helen.

"A tramp?" suggested Miss Webster.

"No. A tramp wouldn't come straight up to the house. It must be a caller; possibly a friend of Carl's," murmured Helen.

The stranger came directly toward the veranda, but at the steps he paused a moment as though embarrassed at sight of the two girls unexpectedly rising to meet him from out of the shadow.

"Is Mr. Andrews in?" he asked, in a low, shy voice, and Helen said she was sorry, but neither her father nor brother were at home. To which did he refer?

"To Mr. Carl Andrews," and then it was explained that he and Mr. Carl Andrews were great chums. They—

"Won't you take a seat," asked Helen, hospitably, and he accepted at once while she introduced Miss Webster and herself and he gave his name as Chester Newcomb.

"Oh, yes; I've often heard Carl speak of you," declared Helen, and then she had to excuse herself to answer Ruth who was calling to her vociferously from upstairs.

"I'm afraid Nan has had bad news," she said, anxiously. "Excuse me, please. I'll go and see what she wants and be back directly."

Mr. Newcomb and Miss Webster fell at once into an easy chat. That is, Miss Webster did. She rattled on in her least attractive manner, and became so absorbed that she only noticed how long Helen had been absent when Mr. Newcomb rose to go and she had not yet returned.

"Pray don't call her," he entreated. "She probably is very much engaged. I—I am spending a couple of weeks here and shall be charmed to come again if I may."

Miss Webster could only in turn assure him that she—that Helen and she would also be charmed, and then he bowed himself off, striding down the path with a free, somewhat boyish swing, and disappearing at length in the shadow of the shrubbery.

He came frequently after that and the girls began to chaff Miss Webster about her "conquest" for he never seemed to care to come when the rest were about, but chose such times for his calls when he and Alice could stroll in the garden after dusk or sit and watch the sea and the stars from the shadow of the broad veranda.

It was very romantic and Miss Webster wore a dreamy, rapt expression nowadays that sent Nan and Ruth off into fits of laughter when they were out of the range of her eyes and ears.

"What a pity it is he can't be here to see?" gasped Ruth.

"Oh, he sees enough, never you fear," Nan assured her. "When one casts sheep's eyes like that they hit even in the dark! Poor thing! She is such a goose. Last night when he told her he was going to-morrow she grew quite tragic and—"

"O Nan! How could you listen?" cried Ruth in a shocked voice but immediately after going into another spasm of laughter.

"She quotes Shakespeare at him," gasped Nan, convulsed with mirth, and not a bit abashed. "You ought to hear. It's rich!"

"Well, we must see that the coast is clear to-night for I s'pose she will be particularly touching, and Helen is getting awfully hard to manage. It wouldn't do to interrupt them at the last minute just when he was getting pathetic maybe. I wonder what he'll do?"

"He'll be real dignified," declared Nan, solemnly. "You wait. He'll be eloquent even if he is 'only a boy' as she says."

So the two girls disappeared utterly after dinner, and when Mr. Newcomb arrived he found Miss Webster quite alone, for Helen also was nowhere to be seen.

"She hasn't been very well lately," Miss Webster explained. "She looks terribly pale and anxious and I'm afraid she has something on her mind. Her headaches worry me!" and then she fell back into her poor, little artificial manner again and sighed and looked sentimental and was altogether "idiotic" as Nan would have said, and their two low-pitched voices could be heard murmuring away in the stillness until poor Helen, who was really half sick with a nervous headache upstairs, could have cried with irritation and pain.

She sat up on the bed when Ruth came into the room, and attacked her at once.

"I can't stand it another minute. It's driving me wild!"

"Hush! It's only to-night. This is the last time. Don't make a scene!" pleaded Ruth.

"I'll never get over it," wailed Helen. "It simply is the most detestable thing I ever knew. In our own house too! If this weren't the last time I—"

What she would do was never discovered for just at that moment a shrill scream ran through the night, followed by the exclamation in a familiar voice:

"Great Scott! My wig!"

And Ruth and Helen rushed below to find Miss Webster in a state of collapse on one of the veranda settees and Nan standing over her, clad in complete male attire, and fanning her frantically with a curly, blonde wig which she wrenched by force from the trellis where it had inadvertently caught.

"I was just leaning back and being beautiful, and it got hooked on a wire or something, and when I went to get up it stayed there and gave me away!" she promptly explained.

Then there was a scene.

Miss Webster wept! Nan lamented! Ruth laughed, and Helen scolded, and no one heard a word any one else was saying.

But after a time every one grew calmer.

"O Helen! I've made such a fool of myself," cried Alice abjectly. "How can you ever respect me again?"

"Respect you? Think of me!" sobbed Helen. "Can you ever forgive me for knowing it all this time and letting it go on? Nan, you wretched girl, come here this minute and beg Miss Webster's pardon. Ruth Andrews, this is your work, Miss! See what you have done, and in your own house, too!"

But at this time Alice surprised them all. She put a gentle hand on Helen's arm and said quite simply, and with a touching dignity:

"Please don't ask anybody to beg my pardon. I deserved the lesson! The girls needn't say a word. I—I—I am a goose, but I'll really try to be better, and the kindest thing they can do is never to refer to it again."

The rare tears sprang to Nan's eyes, and she grasped Miss Webster's hand in a grip that hurt.

"You're downright fine!" she said, "and I'll never forget you as long as I live."

And then she had to beat a hasty retreat to escape Mr. Andrews and his wife, who were just driving up to the door.

But the secret leaked out, and she and Ruth were reprimanded sharply by Mrs. Andrews who, for once in her life, turned severe and called them sternly to account, and it was Alice Webster herself who interceded for them, and begged that everything be forgiven and forgotten.

They were her devoted slaves after that, and Nan, whose fortnight had been extended, at the Andrews' request, to a month, took especial delight in fetching and carrying for her to the close of her stay, and in every possible manner making her feel how sincerely she regarded and respected her.

As for Miss Webster, she seemed like another girl. In fact, Carl Andrews declared that he had never known what a "good sort" she was and said he was mighty glad they had prevailed upon her to stay.

He never knew why the mere mention of his friend, Chester Newcomb's name should cause such a convulsion in the household, and when that gentleman finally arrived, and the family met him for the first time, it certainly seemed strange that they should all redden and stammer as if they had been "awkward nursery children appearing at dinner."

Nan especially could not be induced to have anything to say when he was near, and when Carl discovered this he took a mischievous delight in forcing her into his company and watching her try to "squirm" out of it again. Miss Webster took pity on her and in the simplest, most natural way came to her rescue whenever she was being victimized, and by and by it became apparent even to Carl himself that "Ches and Miss Webster hit it off first-rate."

But at last Nan's visit really drew to a close, and, in spite of her reluctance at leaving these good friends, she felt satisfied to go home—she did not stop to ask herself why.

Town seemed very stuffy and tame after the freedom of the country and the sea, but when Miss Blake asked her if she would like to go away again she replied: "Not alone," and then blushed shamefacedly and tried to change the subject.

While she was gone the governess had committed an extravagance. She had bought a new bicycle.

"What under the sun did you do that for?" demanded Nan. "Your other was a beauty and as good as new."

"But it wasn't new," suggested Miss Blake, lamely.

"Pooh!" sniffed Nan.

"I wanted this year's model."

"Oh, very well! If you can be as particular as all that! How much did they allow you on the other machine? I hope you made a good bargain," said Nan.

"I didn't let them have the other machine," hesitated Miss Blake. "It didn't seem worth while. Besides I may want to use it myself sometimes. Won't you come down and see the new one?"

Of course Nan did not delay, and she went into raptures over the beautiful wheel, praising it generously as she examined every point with the eye of a connoisseur.

"But it seems to me a pretty high frame!" she speculated, standing off and taking it in from a distance.

"I wanted a high frame," responded Miss Blake.

"Seems to me pretty well up in the air for you, even with the saddle down," insisted Nan, doubtfully.

"You try it," suggested the governess. "If it suits you it will certainly be too high for me."

"It does suit me," announced Nan, balancing herself by a hand against the wall. "You'd better send it back and get a lower frame."

But Miss Blake shook her head.

"No, I like this and I'm going to keep it. But of course if it is too high I can't use it, and so—so—I'm afraid you'll have to, Nan. You won't mind, will you? I mean getting your birthday present this way ahead of time? I thought if we waited you'd lose the whole summer."

Nan flung herself from the wheel in a rapture of surprise. It seemed too good to be true. She could not believe it. Miss Blake had her thanks more in the girl's radiant delight than in the mere words she spoke, though these were genuine enough and full enough of gratitude.

All through the long season after that, whenever the heat was not too intense, Nan and her wheel could have been seen flashing through the Park or taking a well-earned rest in the cool shadow of the Dairy porch, where a sip of water seemed sweeter than ambrosia and a fugitive breeze more aromatic than any zephyr from Araby the blest.

Sometimes she and Miss Blake took longer trips into the country, and then the governess had to be constant in her warnings to her against her reckless fashion of riding. Again and again she spoke, and Nan always meant to take heed and then always forgot, and fell back into her old way once more.

"I can't resist such a coast as that was," she would plead. "And if I got off for every old man who thinks he has the right to the road I'd be dismounting all the while."

"I beg you not to take such risks," Miss Blake would rejoin. "It simply spoils my ride for me, Nan, to see you so reckless. Such head-long wheeling has nothing to recommend it. It is neither expert nor admirable. When you fling along so blindly you are merely doing a foolish, heedless thing and running serious risks. I am sure you will come to grief some day."

"Don't you worry! I am as much at home in my saddle as I would be in a rocking-chair. See me ride without touching the handle-bars!"

And presently she would lose all recollection of her good resolve, and go hurling on at a break-neck speed in the van of some skittish horse, or slowly zig-zag ahead in the path of some stolid coachman, causing him to anathematize all wheelmen in general and this especially provoking specimen in particular, while her watching companion held her breath in trembling alarm.

At last Miss Blake told Nan decidedly that unless she were willing to ride properly she must give it up altogether.

"I cannot stand this strain any longer," she said, in real distress.

She and Mrs. Newton and the girl herself were taking their first ride in company since the early summer. Now it was autumn, and the leaves were turning. Mrs. Newton had just come back from the country, and Nan was eager to display her skill, which she felt had improved not a little since their neighbor's departure.

The fresh wind, keen and bracing as it came from the sea, filled her with a sense of new strength and energy, and she felt the effect of the invigorating atmosphere in her blood. A scent of burning leaves was in the air, and the indescribable suggestion of coming winter gayety. To-day the road was crowded with carriages. They thronged the fashionable drive, and lent it a peculiarly animated aspect. Equestrians and wheelmen were also out in full force, and the presence of so many people set Nan's blood tingling with excitement. She tossed her head back, as the governess uttered her decision, with the impatience of a mettlesome horse.

"Now remember!" warned Miss Blake.

Perhaps it was just this extra little warning that proved too much for Nan's overcharged, headstrong spirit—or perhaps she did not hear in the midst of the noise of hoofs and wheels about them.

They were spinning noiselessly along the outer edge of the driveway leading from the Park entrance to the cycle path, when suddenly Nan gave a quick run forward and then made a swift dart for the other side, weaving perilously in and out among the horses and moving vehicles, dexterously dodging, veering, and turning until Miss Blake's heart throbbed thickly from dread and her pulses beat heavily in her temples.

"I must overtake her," she cried to her companion. "She will be killed! I must save her!"

Even as she spoke her breath caught in a short gasp, and she turned suddenly rigid and ashen white.

Coming up the road at full speed was a horse, whose driver, sitting close over its haunches in his narrow sulky, was racing his animal against one similarly driven and urging it on to its utmost pace for winning honor.

At his approach a clear path was made for him by the turning right and left of the throng—by all save Nan.

She heard a man's voice shout hoarsely to her. The oncoming horse had the speed of a racer.

A spirit of mad defiance possessed her. She steered straight as an arrow before her. Then, like a flash, she veered, dodging from under the horse's very nose. She had accomplished her feat very cleverly.

But alas, for Nan!

Even as she sped on, full of the exquisite thrill of exultation in her own prowess she heard behind her the sound of a dull, fear-thickened cry. Then a sudden confusion of voices and the cessation of rolling wheels. She stopped and turned.

The onward sweep of the mass of vehicles had been instantaneously checked. The road was clear for some rods before her and in the centre of this open space lay—a broken bicycle.

A little group of men crowded close about some central object on the ground. Women were wringing their hands and weeping hysterically, and one woman—it was Mrs. Newton—was crying wildly,

"Let me go to her! Let me go!"

The circle of men upon the ground made way, and then Nan saw what it was around which they knelt.

She gave a quick, fierce cry of pain. The little governess lay quite still and motionless. Her eyes were closed; her face was white as marble. All her bright hair was lying loose about her temples—and it was streaked with blood.



CHAPTER XIX

IN MISS BLAKE'S ROOM

Nan never forgot that scene. It seemed to her afterward, that even in the midst of the horror that almost stupefied her and made her blind, it had been indelibly photographed upon her brain to the merest detail with torturing distinctness.

She could see Mrs. Newton's drawn, livid face, and the stern, set expression of the men who gathered about in knots here and there discussing the accident in whispers, or arranging the best means of getting back to town. A doctor, who happened to be near at hand, had sprung forward at the first moment of alarm, and he and a strange, kind-faced woman were together bending over the prostrate form between them, while over all arched the high dome of the blue October sky, beyond them stretched the level road, narrowing in the distance to a point that seemed to pierce the sea, and on either side spread the branches of bordering maple trees, each shining brilliant and gorgeous In the autumn sunlight.

Presently, in response to a demand from the doctor, a low-hung carriage drew out from the ranks of waiting vehicles, and into it was lifted, oh, so carefully! the inert form of the governess, and her head laid upon Mrs. Newton's lap.

Nan pressed close to the wheels.

"Can't I go with her?" she whispered.

Her companion gazed at her blankly for a moment. Then she seemed to realize the question, and answered it.

"No," she replied. "Get my machine, and—and hers, and see that some one carries them back for us—some man will do it."

Then without another word she turned her head away, and slowly, slowly the carriage moved and began its snail's-pace journey townward.

Nan looked helplessly about her.

"Won't some one take the bicycles home?" she pleaded.

She never knew who performed the office. She never cared. She gave some stranger her address without the slightest interest as to whether he was trustworthy or no, and then, mounting her own machine, she sped home as fast as the wheels would turn.

Thus it was that when the dreary little cavalcade reached home at last everything was in readiness for its reception.

There was no difficulty nor delay in getting upstairs, and in an incredibly short time the place had assumed the air of hushed solemnity that always seems to overhang the spot where illness is.

Nan crouched outside the threshold of the sick-room and listened to the low sounds within with a feeling of overwhelming guilt at her heart. She dared not go in.

At last the door was opened, and the physician stepped forward. He saw Nan cowering in the gloom.

"What is this?" he asked kindly.

Nan dragged herself up painfully, as though her limbs had been made of lead.

"Have I—have I—killed her?" she managed to gasp.

The doctor bent on her a pitying look.

"Killed her?" he repeated. "I do not know what you mean. Do you mean will she die? No, my child, not if we can help it—and God grant we may. But it may be long, very long, before she is well. She has been badly hurt, poor little soul!"

Then followed a term of harrowing suspense. Nights when Nan thought the sun had forgotten how to rise—so long they seemed and never ending.

The fever that followed the first season of lethargy raged fierce and hot for many a day, and the delirium that accompanied it was difficult to quell. It seemed at times as though it must burn the patient's very life away. It was during these days that Nan learned how much she had caused her friend to suffer. What, in her moments of consciousness, she had never permitted to pass her lips, now in these hours of delirium she dwelt on and repeated over and over. It was of Nan, always of Nan that she spoke.

Nan must have this; Nan must not do that. It was her duty to protect Nan and guard her. She followed the girl in perilous journeys; she tried to guide her from dangerous courses. She betrayed her anxious care for her in every word she uttered. And then sometimes she would say something that Nan could not comprehend.

"Florence's child!" she would murmur. "Florence's child!" and then she would catch herself back with a sudden look of fear as though she had betrayed a secret.

"My mother's name was Florence," Nan would say brokenly. "But I don't know what she means. She never knew my mother."

At last came a change, and then Nan was excluded from the room.

"You might excite her, and she must be carefully guarded against any chance of that," the doctor said in explanation.

But Nan was almost too happy to care. The first sound of the low, sweet voice speaking intelligently sent a thrill of passionate gratitude to her heart.

How she and Delia plotted and planned for the invalid. How Nan made the room to fairly blossom with the flowers that daily came pouring in from all manner of strange and unexpected sources.

"I never knew she had such lots of friends," the girl said one day to Delia.

The woman looked down at her with a flash of superior understanding in her eyes.

"She's a wise one," she said. "She goes her own way, and it's little she asks of any one and it's less she says. But what she does ain't little, I can tell you, Nan. I know of many a thing she's done for those who, if they haven't got money, have the grateful hearts in them to remember kindness and to love the one that shows it to them. Some day you'll know her for what she is, and then you'll never strive against her any more and you'll love her as many another has done before you."

The girl gazed straight into the woman's eyes. "I love her now, Delia," she said. "I've loved her from the first minute—only I didn't know it some of the time and the rest I was a horrid—little—beast, so there!"

Oh, the happy days that Nan spent in that quiet room above stairs. How she grew to love it! The sunshine coming through the curtains and making great patches of mellow light upon the floor seemed more bright here than anywhere else. If it rained, this place was less dreary than any other, and in sun or storm it was the only spot that Nan felt had the power to quell her wayward mood when it rose against her will and urged her back to her hoydenish exploits once more.

Miss Blake, lying back against her snowy pillows, had a look of such inexpressible sweetness to Nan that often and often the girl would fling herself beside the bed with her arms about the fragile figure, crying:

"Oh, you dear, you dear! how I love you!" and then the other, with a very happy smile would invariably answer, "And I you, Nan."

It was all understood between them now. Pardon had been humbly asked and freely granted, and there was now only the remaining regret of impending separation; the dread of the parting that was to come.

At one time they had thought that it would occur within a few weeks' time, and the joy that Nan felt in her father's return was overshadowed by the grief she experienced in the coming loss of her friend.

But now the date of Mr. Cutler's home-coming had been postponed. He would leave Bombay as he had at first intended, but business would detain him in London, and he could not expect to reach home until that was completed—so Mr. Turner said.

Thus Nan had to reconcile herself to her disappointment and the indefiniteness of her father's return, in the thought that if her meeting with him was deferred, why, so was her parting from Miss Blake.

The weeks that passed before the governess was fairly convalescent had brought them well into November. They had been busy, helpful weeks for Nan. In her thought for her friend's comfort she had unconsciously learned a lesson in gentleness and patience that nothing else could have taught her. Her voice grew lower, her step lighter, and the touch of her fingers more delicate. All this could never have been accomplished in such a short space by ordinary means, but Love is a magical teacher and he instructed her in his art.

As the dear invalid grew stronger Nan tried to beguile the long hours by reading aloud to her from her favorite authors, sage philosophers, wise poets, and tender tale-tellers. Sometimes she did not at all comprehend the meaning of the pages she read, but Miss Blake was always ready to give her "a lift" over the hardest places, and to her surprise she grew really to love these serious books, and to get an insight into the beauty of their character.

Once in awhile she would take up the daily paper to give her friend an idea of "what was going on in the world," seriously reading discussions about this "bill" or that "question" with absolutely no conception of what the whole thing was about.

One day, it was during the last of November, she sat before the fire in the governess' room feeling especially contented and placidly happy. Miss Blake, safely ensconced among her cushions, was cozily sipping a cup of bouillon.

The room was very still.

Suddenly Nan jumped to her feet, and, clasping her hands high over her head, said, with a luxurious sort of yawn:

"Oh—my! How I'm liking it nowadays. Things are so sort of sweet and cozy. Do you s'pose it's too good to last? Do you s'pose it has anything to do with my trying to be good and not letting my 'angry passions rise'?"

The governess nodded her head, but made no other reply and after an instant Nan slipped to the floor again, and, sitting Turk-fashion beside her companion's knee, considered how possible it would have been for Miss Blake to have taken that occasion to lecture her on the past error of her ways. But she had learned that it was not the governess' way to preach. That nod was as eloquent as a sermon to Nan, and she understood it perfectly.

"Shall I read you something from 'The Tribune'?" she asked, after a moment's musing. And she took up the paper and began searching for the editorial page. When she had found it she set about reading the first leader that came to hand, quite regardless of whether it would prove interesting to her auditor or not. The fact that it was unintelligible to her seemed a sort of guarantee, in her mind, that it would be interesting to Miss Blake. She read on and on until both her breath and the column itself came to a stop.

"You poor child," said the governess affectionately. "Don't read another word of that. How stupid it must be for you. Here, take this book of dear Mary Wilkins. We can both of us understand her, and she will do us both good. You need not victimize yourself a moment longer, dear Nannie."

But Nan, radiant with good humor, felt a sort of glory in just such self-victimizing. She searched through the page for further unintelligible text.

All at once she paused and read a few lines to herself. Then she burst into a laugh.

"Here's something about a man who has such a funny name. It's James Murty, alias Dan Divver, alias Shaughnessy. What a last name—Shaughnessy! And why was he called alias twice over, Miss Blake? I didn't know one could have the same name more than once. It seems awfully expensive—I mean extravagant." Miss Blake laughed.

"You are thinking of Elias, Nan. This man's name is not Elias. Alias is pronounced differently, and is not a name at all, but a word signifying otherwise, or otherwise called. It means that the man has gone under those different titles. And I don't think I care to hear what it has to say about the gentleman, dear. He probably isn't just the sort of person whose exploits would make fair reading."

"Is he bad?" asked Nan.

"I should gather, from his names, that his existence had been somewhat checkered," replied the governess with a twinkle in her eye.