"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 st.u.r.dy 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.