Nancy might have given too much thought and time to the coming “midnight spread,” and neglected her lessons a bit had Cora Rathmore not taken the entire arrangements for the affair into her own hands. Cora did not seem to mind getting only “fair” marked on her weekly reports. She just shrugged her shoulders and said:

“I should worry!”

But before Nancy plucked up the courage to say anything about who was to be invited she found that Cora had already seen to that Cora and Grace Montgomery.

“I’d like to have Jennie Bruce come,” Nancy suggested timidly one day.

“Goodness! why didn’t you say so before?” snapped Cora.

“Why? Won’t there be room for her?”

“We’ve made up the whole list, and the girls have been invited. We couldn’t squeeze in another girl.”

“Why why, who made up the list?”

“Grace and I. Here it is,” and Cora snapped a paper upon Nancy’s desk.

Nancy read it over without comment. There wasn’t a girl invited to the party at Number 30, West Side, whom Nancy liked any better than she did Cora herself! She began to doubt if the coming entertainment was going to be a success as far as she was concerned after all.

The girls ran in to see Cora again. Even Grace appeared in Number 30. But none of them spoke more than perfunctorily to Nancy, and the lonely girl felt herself as much “out of it” as ever.

But she had one enjoyment now that made up for many previous lonely hours at the school. She could skate!

Clinton River remained frozen over; the ice grew thicker and the lodgekeeper and Samuel reported each morning that it was perfectly safe.

The boys from the Academy, too, appeared. Nancy was not much interested in them only curious. Even the girls of her own class seemed to be very desirous of making acquaintances among the Academy boys.

“You see,” Jennie Bruce told her, “after the holidays we have entertainments at the Hall, and Dr. Dudley lets his boys give a minstrel show. We each have a dance during the winter one at the Academy and one at the Hall; and if you know some of the boys beforehand it’s lots easier to get partners at the dance.”

“I’d just as lief dance with another girl, I think,” said Nancy, timidly.

“Pshaw! that’s no fun,” returned Jennie.

“I never did dance with a boy,” admitted Nancy. “Where where I lived only the girls danced together.”

“Where was that?” demanded Jennie.

“At school,” said Nancy, blushing, and sorry she had said so much now.

“Oh! a ‘kid’ school?” laughed Jennie.

“Well yes.”

“Where was it?”

“It it was a long way from here,” responded Nancy, slowly.

She couldn’t bear to tell even Jennie with whom she so desired to be friends where Higbee School was located. Of course, Jennie noticed this point of mystery, and she looked at Nancy curiously. The latter couldn’t find another word to say.

She skated off by herself. The ringing ice was delightful. Nancy skated as well as any boy, while she was naturally being a girl more graceful in her motions.

She sped like a dart across the river, came around in a great curve, like a bird tacking against a stiff breeze, and then started back “on the roll.”

Hands in her jersey pockets, her skates tapping the ice firmly as she bore her weight first on one, then on the other foot, Nancy seemed fairly to float over the frozen river.

She saw a group of girls and boys standing about where the Hall boundary was; but she did not recognize any of them until she was rolling past. Then she heard Grace Montgomery’s shrill voice:

“Oh, she’s only showing off. Her name’s Nelson. Cora knows all about her.”

“No, I don’t,” snapped Cora Rathmore’s voice. “But she’s chummed on me.”

Nancy heard no more. She didn’t want to. She realized that, after all, behind her back these girls were speaking just as unkindly of her as ever.

Suddenly she realized that the group had broken up. At least, one of the boys had darted out of it and was racing down toward her.

“What’s the matter with you, Bob?” she heard Grace call after the boy.

“Say! I know that girl,” a cheerful voice declared, and the next moment the speaker, bending low, and racing like a dart, reached Nancy’s side.

“Hold on! Don’t you remember me?” he exclaimed.

Nancy looked at him, startled. His plump, rosy, smiling face instantly reflected an image in her memory.

“I’m Bob Endress,” he said. “But if it hadn’t been for you I wouldn’t have had any name at all or anything else in life. Don’t you remember?”

It was the boy who had been saved from the millrace that August afternoon. Of course Nancy couldn’t have forgotten him. But she was so confused she did not know what to say for the moment.

“You haven’t forgotten throwing that tire to me?” he cried. “Why! that was the smartest thing! The chauffeur would never have thought of it. And Grace and those other girls would have been about as much use as so many mice. You were as good as a boy, you were. I’d have been drowned.”

“I I’m glad you weren’t,” she gasped.

“Then you remember me?”

“Oh, yes. I couldn’t forget your face.”

“Well!” he cried, “I never did expect to see you around this part of the country. But I told father I wanted to go back there to Malden next summer and see if I couldn’t come across you. And my mother wrote to a friend there about you, too. We all wanted to know who you were.”

“I I am Nancy Nelson,” said the girl, timidly.

“Sure! Grace, or somebody, was just speaking of you,” said the boy. “You see, I was motoring through that country on the way to Chicago, in Senator Montgomery’s car. That was a pretty spot at that old mill and the girls saw the lilies. So I had to wade in for them like a chump,” and he laughed.

“It was dangerous, I suppose,” confessed Nancy. “But I often longed to wade in myself for them.”

“And you got them anyway!” he cried, bursting into another laugh. “Grace and the others were sore about it. They had to wait until we got to the next town before we found any more lilies. Then I got a boat and went after them.”

Nancy had stopped skating, and she and the boy stood side by side, talking. What the Montgomery girl and her friends would think about this Nancy did not at the time imagine.

“But it’s funny Grace didn’t recognize you,” said Bob, suddenly.

“No. In the confusion they wouldn’t have noticed me very closely,” Nancy replied.

“Well! I don’t see how Grace could have missed knowing such a jolly girl as you.”

His boyish, outspoken opinion amused Nancy. Although Bob was at least three years her senior she soon became self-possessed. Girls are that way usually.

“You’re a dandy skater,” said Bob. “Will you skate with me?”

“Oh, yes; if you want me to,” replied Nancy.

She had never skated with a boy before. They crossed hands and started off on the long roll. Nancy was just as sturdy on her skates as the boy. It was delightful to cross the ice so easily, yet swiftly, and feel that one’s partner was perfectly secure, too.

And Bob Endress was such a nice boy. Nancy decided that her first good opinion of him, formed when she had seen him wading in the millpond after water-lilies, was correct. He was gentlemanly, frank, and as jolly as could be.

She remembered very well now that she had heard various other girls at Pinewood Hall talk of Bob Endress. He was some distant connection of the haughty Grace Montgomery.

And he had left Grace and all those other girls in a minute to renew his odd acquaintance with Nancy.

The latter could not fail to feel a glow all through her at this thought. She had all the aspirations of other girls. She wanted to be liked by people even by boys. And Bob was evidently a great favorite with her schoolmates.

Round and round the course they skated. It seemed to Nancy as though she never would tire with such a partner. And she forgot that the girls Bob had deserted might be offended with her. For once a tiny, short hour Nancy Nelson was perfectly happy.

Until the distant chime in the tower of Pinewood Hall warned the girls that they must go in, Nancy and Bob skimmed over the ice to the envy of less accomplished skaters. Nancy came back to the boathouse all in a glow, after promising to meet Bob the next afternoon on the river.

There were Grace Montgomery and Cora, and Belle Macdonald, and the others of their clique, taking off their skates. Nancy felt so happy that she would have made friends, just then, with almost anyone.

She flung off her skates and smiled at the other girls. She smiled at Samuel when she asked him, to sharpen them against the next afternoon, and tipped him for his trouble.

But whereas the under gardener smiled in return and praised her skating, the girls stared at her as though she were a complete stranger. Grace turned her back contemptuously. Cora scowled blackly.

And when she was back in Number 30, West Side, making ready for supper, her roommate came in noisily, tossed her skates on the floor, and burst out with:

“Well! you’re a nice girl, you are!”

“What’s the matter now?” asked Nancy, with more courage than usual.

“I should think you’d ask!”

“I do ask,” said Nancy.

“Well, you’ve just about spoiled my our party.”

“How?”

“You know well enough,” snapped Cora.

“I do not,” declared Nancy. “I have done nothing.”

“Oh, no! Just walking off with Bob Endress and keeping him all the afternoon. Why, Grace is his cousin and she’ll never forgive you.”

It was on the tip of Nancy’s tongue to say she didn’t care; but instead she remained silent.

“I had the hardest work to coax her to come to-night,” went on Cora.

This was the evening marked for the spread in Number 30.

“I do not see that I have done anything to you girls,” said Nancy, with some warmth. “I happened to know Bob Endress

“How did you come to know Bob? He never said anything about it,” snapped Cora.

“Well, I can assure you we were acquainted.”

“It’s certainly very strange,” said the other girl, suspiciously.

“I don’t see that it is anybody’s business but our own,” Nancy Nelson returned, with growing confidence. “And I did not mean to offend either you or Miss Montgomery.”

“It’s very strange.”

“Not at all.”

“Well, I don’t know how you will explain it to Grace.”

“I don’t have to,” said Nancy, and now she was getting angry.

“Let me tell you, Miss, you will have to,” cried Cora, more snappishly than ever.

“I do not see why.”

“Let me tell you Grace Montgomery is the most influential and popular girl in our class. You’ll find that out if you continue to offend her.”

“I don’t see how I have offended her; nor do I see how I can pacify her if she is angry with me,” returned Nancy, doggedly.

“You’d better let Bob Endress alone, then,” cried Cora.

“Why! how meanly you talk,” said Nancy, fairly white now with anger.

“Well! there’s something very strange about how you took him right away from us

“If you don’t stop talking like that,” Nancy answered, her eyes blazing, “I shall not speak to you at all.”

“Well, you’ve got to explain to Grace, then.”

“I will explain nothing to her.”

“Then you mean to spoil our party to-night?”

“No. It isn’t my party, that is evident. I’ll go into some other room while you are holding it, if that’s what you want.”

Cora looked at her askance. Nancy had never shown any temper before since the term had opened. Cora did not really know whether her roommate would do as she said, or not.

“Oh, we’re not dying to have you in here. You can go to Number 38. You know both of the girls from there will be here.”

“That’s what I’ll do, then,” answered Nancy, firmly.

“I’ll tell Grace,” said Cora, rather uncertainly. “Then she’ll be sure and come. Oh, she is mad.”

“I hope she will remain mad with me as long as we are both at Pinewood!” cried Nancy, desperately, and then she ran out of the room to hide the tears of anger and disappointment which she could no longer keep back.