There would be no opportunity before the first intermission--at 10:30 o'clock--to look at their contents.

CHAPTER XII

THE FIRST ADVANCE

Madame Schakael had prophesied that Nancy would be perfect in her recitations that day, and so there would be no doubt of her being able to go skating on the river. But with the unexpected letters from Mr.

Gordon's office unopened, it seemed hardly probable that Nancy would pull through the day without a reprimand.

"What _is_ the matter with you, Miss Nelson?" demanded one of the teachers sharply, when Nancy had made an unusually brainless answer to a very simple question.

Nancy came out of her haze with a sharp shock.

"Why--why, Miss Maybrick, I know very much better than that," she admitted.

"Where is your mind, then, Miss?"

"I--I----"

Nancy was usually frankness personified, and she blurted it out now:

"I'm wondering what is in the two letters I have in my pocket, Miss Maybrick."

"Where did you get them?" demanded the suspicious teacher.

"Madame Schakael gave them to me. I suppose they are from my guar----"

No! she could not claim Henry Gordon as her guardian. "From the gentleman who pays my bills here," she added, in a lower voice.

"Well, for mercy's sake go to your seat and read them," said the instructor, but more mildly. "They may be important. And having mastered their contents, please try to master the lesson."

Nancy did as she was bid. With trembling fingers she opened one of the envelopes. They both were typewritten as to address; but one seemed addressed by an amateur in the art of typewriting. Nancy opened the other first.

The enclosure was a slip of paper on which was written in a hurried scrawl:

"You may need something extra. This is for your own use.

--H. Gordon."

And wrapped in this paper was a crisp twenty-dollar bill!

Nancy had scarcely spent a penny of her carefully h.o.a.rded pocket money since coming to Pinewood Hall. Indeed, she had found no opportunity for using it.

There had been plenty of secret "spreads" and "fudge orgies" in other rooms. Cora had been to a lot of them, and had always slipped back into Number 30 without being caught by any prowling teacher.

But of course Nancy had been invited to contribute to none of these, and she was a particularly healthy girl with a particularly healthy appet.i.te: so she did not crave "sponge cake and pickles," or other combinations of forbidden fruits supposed to be the boarding-school misses' extreme delight.

Mr. Gordon had sent the banknote to her without any more feeling, seemingly, than he would have had in throwing a bone to a dog. Yet, it might be his way of showing her sympathy. Nancy slipped it back in the envelope and picked up the second letter.

And before she opened this she believed she knew what it contained. She had not forgotten "Scorch" O'Brien. Scorch had promised to watch "Old Gordon" and write to her. He had used one of the office envelopes and had stolen a minute when some typewriter was not in use.

Madame Schakael thought both letters were from Mr. Gordon. Nancy was too curious as to what Scorch had written to deny herself the reading of the contraband epistle.

It was much blotted and the scrawl characteristic of an office boy's chirography proved that his terms at public school had not done Scorch much good. This was the letter:

"Nancy Nelson,

Dear Miss:

I guess you haven't forgotten Scorch O'Brien. That's me. I said I'd rite if I got a line on Old Gordon, that he was doing you queer. I bet he is, but I don't know nothing for sure yet. I put a twist on him this morning and I see a letter now in the male-basket for you, so I says to myself, 'Scorch, what you said took like vaccination.' Ouch! me arm hurts yet!

Well, I says to Old G., says I, 'What's come of the girl what blew me to lunch at the Arrandale? She was some swell little dame, she was.'

Says he, 'Mind your own business, Scorch. That's a good motto for you to paste up over your desk.'

'Nix,' says I. 'If I didn't mind everybody else's biz in this office the whole joint would go to gra.s.s.' And that's right.

'That girl's just the same as in jail at that boarding-school,'

says I. 'Have you forgotten her?'

'How'd I remember?' says he, looking sort of queer.

'Come across with a piece of change for her,' says me--I'm practerkal, I be. Money always comes in handy; now, don't it?

Write an' tell me if he took my tip. And no more now, from,

"Yours respectfully, "Scorch O'Brien."

It was Scorch all over--that letter! Nancy Nelson came near laughing right out in the cla.s.sroom; but she could cram both letters into her pocket and go on with her studies with a more composed mind.

Scorch was evidently her friend. And eminently practical, as he declared. Nothing could be more practical than that twenty-dollar bill.

And the red-haired Irish boy had put it into Mr. Gordon's mind to send her this substantial tip.

She took the twenty-dollar bill out and looked at it again. It was very real.

Cora Rathmore sat behind her in this cla.s.s. Nancy happened to turn about as she slipped the banknote out of sight again, and she saw that her roommate was looking hard at her. Nancy turned away herself. She was angrier with Cora than she had ever been before since the opening of Pinewood Hall.

Jennie Bruce, one of the girls of her cla.s.s whom Nancy admired the most, leaned over and whispered to her:

"Goodness me! but you are the wealthy girl. Was that real money, or just stage money?"

Jennie was a thin, snappy girl, with dancing eyes, a continual smile, and as elusive as a drop of mercury. She just couldn't keep still, and she was always getting minor marks in deportment because her sense of fun was sure to bubble over at inopportune times.

"I--I guess it's real money," whispered Nancy, although talking during lessons was frowned on by all the instructors.

But Nancy was only too glad when Jennie Bruce spoke to her. She was just a little afraid of Jennie's sharp tongue; and yet she had never been the b.u.t.t of any of the harum-scarum's jokes. Perhaps Jennie had spared Nancy because the latter was so much alone. The fun-loving one was not cruel.

"Twen-ty-dol-lars," whispered Jennie, with big eyes. "You certainly are rich. What a lot of pickles that would buy!" and she grinned.

Nancy smiled. She knew that Jennie was only in fun when she suggested such an expenditure. But the thought smote the lonely girl's mind that by the spending of this money in "treating" she might gain a certain popularity among the other girls.