"Yes! and who is going to be leader of the freshman cla.s.s?" demanded Cora. "The big girls have got something to say about that, I suppose?"

"Some of the teachers will have," laughed Belle. "You'll find that out.

Who are you rooting for, Cora?"

"Grace, of course! Why, her father's a senator, and she's got lots of money. She's influential. She ought to be cla.s.s president."

"All right; but the election isn't allowed until just before Christmas.

It will be the most popular girl then, you'll find. And she'll have to be popular with the teachers as well as with you girls."

This conversation in Number 30, West Side, occurred something like a fortnight after school had opened. The girls were all at work by that time--those who _would_ work, at least.

Because she was so much alone, perhaps, Nancy Nelson's record was all the better. But she did not sulk in her room.

Indeed, Cora had so much company--girls who usually ignored Nancy altogether--that the orphan was glad to get out when they appeared. And her refuge was the gym. There she became acquainted with the more athletic girls of the school.

They found--even the sophs and juniors--that Nancy could play tennis and other games. She swam like a fish, too, and was eager to learn to row.

The captain of the crew, the coach of the basketball team, and others of the older girls, began to pay some attention to Nancy.

But with her own cla.s.s she had not become popular. Nancy really had little more than a speaking acquaintance with any other freshman.

Not being included in the group of girls who so often came to see Cora Rathmore in Number 30, Nancy was debarred from other groups, too. n.o.body came to see her in the room, and she was invited nowhere--perhaps because the other girls thought she must be "in" with the clique to which Cora belonged.

At the head of this party of freshmen was the very proud girl named Grace Montgomery, whom Cora indefatigably aped. Girls who were proud of their parents' money, or who catered to such girls because they were so much better off than their mates, for the most part made up this clique.

There was not more than a score of them; but they clung together and were an influence in the cla.s.s, although altogether there were nearly a hundred freshmen.

As the days went by the lessons became harder and the teachers more strict. Nancy found that it was very hard to be put out of her own room in study time because of the chattering of other girls, many of whom, it seemed, did not care how they stood in their cla.s.ses.

"Really, I cannot hear myself think!" Nancy gasped one day when she had sat with her elbows on her desk, her hands clasped over her ears, trying to give all her attention to the text-book before her.

For half an hour there had been noise enough in Number 30 to drive a deaf and dumb person distracted.

"Well, if you don't like it, you can get out!" snapped Cora, when Nancy complained. "You're not wanted here, anyway."

"But I have as much right here as you have--and a better right than your friends," said Nancy, for once aroused.

"I don't think a girl like you has any business in the school at all,"

cried Cora, angrily. "Who knows anything about you? Goodness me! you're a perfect Miss n.o.body--I can't find a living soul that knows anything about you. I don't even know if your folks are respectable. I've written home to my folks about it--that's what _I_ have done," pursued the angry girl. "I'm going to find out if we girls who come from nice families have got to mix up with mere n.o.bodies!"

CHAPTER XI

ON CLINTON RIVER

This was not the only unpleasant discussion Nancy Nelson had with her ill-tempered roommate. But it was one of those that hurt Nancy the most.

Whenever Cora hinted at the other girl's lack of friends and relatives--at the mystery which seemed to surround her private life--Nancy could no longer talk. Sometimes she cried; but not often where her roommate could see her.

There was a scrub crew for the eight-oared sh.e.l.l. Nancy made that, and Carrie Littlefield, who was the captain of the school crew, praised her work.

The athletic instructor, Miss Etching, praised Nancy for her swimming and general athletic work. There wasn't a freshie or soph who could stand against her on the tennis court. She had learned to play basketball, and played it well. The coach had her eye on Nancy for one of the best teams in the school.

On the other hand the girl from Higbee School stood well in her cla.s.ses, and she had no black marks against her. No teacher had been forced to admonish Nancy, and Corinne Pevay had a cheerful word for her and a smile whenever Nancy crossed her path.

And yet the girl could not be happy. Her own mates--the freshmen--seemed afraid of her. Or, at least, some of them did. And if Nancy was to have chums she must find them, of course, in her own cla.s.s.

For the first few weeks of a school year the new girls gradually get settled--both in their studies and in their friendships. Had Nancy by good chance been paired with a different girl--with a girl who had not already formed her own a.s.sociates--matters might have gone along much more smoothly.

But Cora disliked her from the start. And the black-eyed girl was sharp enough to see that accusing Nancy of being "a n.o.body" for some reason hurt her roommate more than anything else.

Therefore, being of a malicious disposition, Cora continued to harp upon this, until she had spread through the school the suspicion that Nancy had come to Pinewood Hall under unusual circ.u.mstances. n.o.body knew where she had come from. She never spoke of her people, nor of where she had lived.

And, of course, this was quite true. Nancy did not want to tell about her life at Higbee School. Fortunately no girl from Higbee had ever come to Pinewood Hall before, and the girl thought that her secret was safe.

Cora and her friends might suspect, but they really knew nothing about Nancy's past life. Already some of the girls had received boxes from home--those delightful surprise boxes that give such a zest to boarding-school life. Nancy never received a letter, even.

So, Nancy could not be very happy at Pinewood Hall.

Other girls went around in recreation hours with their arms about each other's waists, chattering with all the cheerfulness of blackbirds. They had "secrets" together and whispered about them in corners. There were little, harmless gatherings in the dormitories, sometimes after curfew; but Nancy had no part in these girlish dissipations.

Perhaps it was her own fault. But the girl, who felt herself ostracized, feared a rebuff. As Madame Schakael had said to Corinne, Nancy was one of the sensitive ones. And the sensitive girl at boarding school is bound to have a hard time unless she very quickly makes a lasting friendship, or becomes a popular member of some group of her schoolfellows right at the start.

When she felt very lonely in Number 30, or when Cora's friends made it impossible for her to study, Nancy sought comfort--such as it was--in the gym., or in taking long walks by the river.

The Pinewood estate was a large one and she did not have to go out of bounds to get plenty of walking exercise. Furthermore, as soon as the frost came, all the athletic girls were anxious about the ice.

Clinton River was a quiet, if broad, stream and before the last of October the edges and the quiet pools insh.o.r.e were skimmed over. Nancy, who loved skating, and had bought a beautiful pair of skates the year before with her own pocket-money, watched the forming ice almost daily.

"Great times on the river when it once freezes over," she heard one girl say. "And I bet the boys at the Academy are watching just as closely as we are."

Clinton Academy, Nancy had learned, was only a mile away. She had even seen its towers, from a distance. And some of Dr. Dudley's boys had pa.s.sed the lodge one day when Nancy was down there visiting Jessie Pease.

For the girl had occasionally taken advantage of the invitation the lodgekeeper's wife had extended to her, and had visited her in the neat little cottage. Mrs. Pease frequently got some of the younger girls together in her kitchen on rainy days, and let them pull taffy and pop corn, and otherwise enjoy themselves.

Yet, once away from the presence of the kind-hearted matron, Nancy found herself no closer to her schoolmates than before.

November brought dark nights and black frost. Clintondale was well up toward the Great Lakes and sometimes the winter arrives early in that part of the country.

It did so this year--the first of Nancy Nelson's sojourn at Pinewood Hall. One morning Nancy got up while it was still dark, slipping out to the bathroom as noiselessly as a little gray ghost--her robe was of that modest color. There she swiftly made her toilet and then as quietly dressed in Number 30.

She had learned to do all this without rousing Cora, for her roommate was very unpleasant indeed if she woke up in the morning and found Nancy stirring about the room. No matter if the rising bell had rung, Cora always accused Nancy, on these occasions, of deliberately spoiling her morning nap. Cora _was_ a sleepy-head in the morning, and always appeared to "get out of bed on the wrong side."

However, Nancy left Number 30 without disturbing her roommate on this morning and, well wrapped up against the biting cold, slipped downstairs and out of one of the rear doors. The front door of Pinewood Hall had not been unchained at that hour.

She was the first girl out and it was an hour yet to breakfast time. She ran straight through the pine woods at the back, pa.s.sing the gymnasium and frozen courts, and so down to the river.