"Oh, I don't know!" said Cora, sullenly sitting down. "It's just too mean! I've got to stop here, I suppose."

"And they've taken Belle from me and given me Annie Gibbons," cried the visitor. "And Annie snores--horridly!"

"It's a hateful place," snarled Cora Rathmore.

"I wish my folks hadn't sent me here," groaned the other.

"I'd run away--for half a cent," declared the Rathmore girl.

"Where would you run to?" demanded her friend.

"Anywhere. To the city. I don't care. Pinewood Hall isn't going to be any fun at all, if we can't pair off as we choose."

"Who's your chum?" asked the visitor again, eyeing Nancy, who had returned to her own side of the room and had turned her back to them.

"Oh, I don't know. Some _n.o.body_, of course!"

The words cut Nancy to the heart. The very phrase, uttered by chance, was the one she had feared most in coming to Pinewood Hall.

"Oh," thought she, "if they say that of me already, what _will_ they say when they find that I really have no home and no folks?"

CHAPTER X

"WHO IS SHE, ANYWAY?"

The curfew bell sent the younger girls to their rooms a few moments later; but Cora Rathmore went to bed without speaking to her roommate.

And Nancy felt too unhappy herself to try to overcome the other girl's reticence.

The girl from Higbee School had had so many adventures that day that she could not at once go to sleep. She lay awake a long time after Cora's heavy and regular breathing a.s.sured her that her companion in Number 30 was in the land of dreams.

She heard the gong at ten which demanded silence and "lights out" of the girls on the upper dormitory floors. Then a list-slippered teacher went through the corridor. After that she went to sleep.

But her own dreams were not very restful. She was hiding something all night long from some creature that had a hundred eyes!

In the morning, when she awoke, she knew that what she had been trying to hide--what she _must_ hide, indeed--was the knowledge that she was "Miss n.o.body" from all these eager, inquisitive, perhaps heartless girls.

Nancy had been in the habit of rising early, and she was up and dressed before rising bell at seven. When Cora rolled over sleepily and blinked about the sun-flooded room, she saw Nancy tying her hair-ribbon, being otherwise completely dressed, and she whined:

"Well! I sha'n't like _you_, Miss. I can see that, plainly. You don't know enough to lie abed and let a fellow sleep."

"I am sure _I_ did not wake you," replied Nancy, composedly. "It was the gong."

"Bah!" grumbled Cora, crawling out of bed.

Nancy had read over the rules again and she knew that from rising bell until breakfast at half-past seven she was free to do as she chose. So, not caring to listen to her roommate's ill-natured remarks, she slipped out and found her way downstairs and out of the building.

It was a clear, warm September morning. The leaves on the distant maples had only just begun to turn. The lawns before Pinewood Hall were beautiful. Behind and on both sides of the great main building was the grove of huge pine trees that gave the place its name.

Beautifully smooth, pebbled paths led through this grove in several directions. Nancy chanced upon one that led to the gymnasium and swimming pool. There were tennis and basketball courts, and other means of athletic enjoyment.

Down the easy slope, from the top of the knoll where the gym. stood, flowed the wide, quiet Clinton River, with a pennant snapping in the morning breeze on the staff a-top the school boathouse.

"Oh, this is the most beautiful place!" thought Nancy. "What a perfectly lovely time I should have here if only the girls liked me. I must _make_ them like me. That's what I've got to do."

She saw only two or three other girls about the grounds, and those at a distance. As she ran back to the main building, however, that structure began to hum with life. More than anything else did Pinewood Hall remind Nancy of a great beehive.

Many of the bedroom windows were wide open now; the more or less tousled heads of girls in all stages of dressing appeared, and disappeared again, at these windows. They called back and forth to each other; laughter rang happily from many of the dormitories; the waking life of the great school seemed, to the lonely girl, very charming indeed.

Why, among all these girls there must be some who would be friendly!

This thought helped Nancy a great deal. She entered the building and joined the beginning of the line at the breakfast-room door, much encouraged.

"Look at these hungry young ones," exclaimed Corinne Pevay, coming down the broad stair from the West Side, like a queen descending to give audience to her subjects.

"Morning, Corinne! Morning, Miss Pevay!" were the cries of greeting.

"'Good morning, little myrtle-blossoms! Let me tell you mommer's plan!'"

sing-songed the older girl. "'Do some good to all the folkses'--Hullo, Carrie!"

"'Good-morn-ing-Car-rie!'" sang the crowd of girls at the dining-room door as the captain of the East Side of the Hall appeared--Carrie Littlefield.

There was a burst of laughter, and Corinne held up her hand admonishingly.

"Not so much racket, children!" she said. "There! the gate is opened, and you can all go in to pasture. Little lambkins!"

Nancy was carried on by the line to the open door. The pleasant-faced woman who had stood in the doorway of the lodge the evening before, was here, and she tapped Nancy on the shoulder.

"Go to the lower tables, my dear. You are a new girl, and all your cla.s.s will be down there. What is your name?"

"Nancy Nelson."

"Yes, indeed. Your trunk and bag are here. Between eight and nine you may come to the trunk room in the bas.e.m.e.nt and show me which of your possessions you wish carried to your room. Where is your room?"

"Number 30," replied Nancy.

"East or West?"

"West, ma'am."

"I am Jessie Pease," said the good woman, smiling kindly on the orphan.

"If you need anything, my dear, come to Jessie; she's the big sister of all you girls," and she patted Nancy on the head as the girl, her heart warmed suddenly, went to her place at the end of the room.

The girls of her cla.s.s--the incoming cla.s.s of new girls, or freshmen--took places at the table as they chose. There were no more than a score as yet. Some had already formed groups of acquaintanceship.

Some few, like Nancy, were alone; but Nancy did not feel that she could force her company on any one of these other lonesome souls. She must wait for them to speak first to her.

The soph.o.m.ores filled their tables nearby, chattering and laughing. They looked with much amus.e.m.e.nt at the freshmen, but some of the teachers were in the room now and the second-year girls thought it best not to "rig" their juniors openly.