"You say Jennie Bruce is not to blame?" asked Madame Schakael, after another minute of silence.

"Oh, no, Madame!"

"Oh, dear me!" cried the other girl, "You just don't understand, Madame----"

Nancy made a pleading gesture to stop her newly-made friend. Madame held up her hand, too.

"I believe what Nancy Nelson says, Miss Bruce," she observed, gravely.

"You shall not be punished."

"I don't care for that!" cried the impulsive Jennie. "But Nancy ought not to be punished, either."

"Will you let _me_ be the judge of that, Jennie?" asked the Madame, softly.

Jennie was abashed.

"Nancy is out of her room out of hours. That is a fault--a serious fault. You both know that?"

"Yes, Madame," said the stiff-lipped Nancy, while Jennie began to sob.

"I notice that Jennie's roommate is not here. When she returns, Nancy, you may go back to your own room. And I shall deal out the same sort of punishment to Sally that I do to you, Nancy.

"And that is," pursued Madame Schakael, slowly, "that you will be denied recreation, save that which is a part of the school curriculum, until the Christmas recess."

Nancy said nothing. But she fully understood what it meant. No outdoor runs alone, no skating, nothing save the exercises prescribed by the physical instructor.

"You may wait for Sally's return. And you are both forbidden to speak of this visit," the princ.i.p.al said, and withdrew from the room as softly as she had entered it.

"Oh, dear me!" gasped Nancy, "she will catch them all in Number 30."

"And serve 'em right," said Jennie.

They waited, expecting to see Jennie's roommate coming back in a hurry.

But there was no disturbance. The clock at the foot of the main staircases had long since struck eleven. Now it tolled midnight.

Soon there were creaking of doors, faint rustlings in the corridors, giggling half-suppressed, and then the door of Number 40 opened again softly.

"Oh, gee!" exclaimed Sally. "Is she _here_?"

"Yes, she is," replied Jenny, tartly. "What have you got to say against it?"

"Oh, you needn't be so short, Jennie Bruce," said Sally.

She slipped out of her wrapper and into her bed. Nancy got up, kissed Jennie warmly, and left the room silently. When she got back to Number 30 Cora was alone. All traces of the spread were hidden.

Cora said never a word; neither did Nancy. But she wondered much. Madame Schakael, she believed, had not hunted out the mystery of _her_ being with Jennie Bruce. Would she and Sally be the only ones punished for this affair?

Morning came and with it the usual a.s.sembly in the hall for prayers after breakfast. From the platform Madame Schakael read, without a word of explanation, the names of every girl who had attended Cora's spread--save Cora herself--and ordered that they be deprived of recreation, as had Nancy, "for being out of their dormitories after hours." The blow fell like a thunderclap upon the culprits.

When they filed out of the hall to go to first recitation not one of the girls who had been at Number 30 the night before but scowled deadly hatred at poor Nancy.

It would have been useless for Nancy to point out that she, too, had received the same punishment. Circ.u.mstances were against the girl who had practically been turned out of her own room while the party was having a glorious time eating salad, macaroons, ice cream, and various other indigestible combinations of "sweeties."

Cora Rathmore had escaped. How? Her mates did not stop to investigate _that_ mystery.

If Cora could have explained she did not set about it. Instead, in first recitation, where she sat behind Nancy, she poked her in the back with a needle-like forefinger and hissed:

"You're a nice one; aren't you?"

Nancy merely gave her a look, but made no reply.

"Don't play the innocent. We all know that you went to the Madame and so got square with us."

"I--did--not!" declared Nancy, sternly.

"Miss Nelson!" exclaimed Miss Maybrick, suddenly.

Nancy whirled around, "eyes front."

"Demerit--talking in cla.s.s," said the teacher.

That was the first time such a thing had happened to Nancy. It did seem as though everything bad was tumbling on top of her at once. She would not look around again when Cora poked her, but kept at her books--or appeared to!

What little joy she had had in school heretofore was all gone now.

Lessons dragged; she thought the instructors all looked at her suspiciously.

Just the recreation room in the bas.e.m.e.nt between lessons, or a demure walk with Miss Etching, the physical instructor, over the snowy lawns and wood paths about Pinewood. Extra gym work was denied her, and when the other girls ran with their skates to the river after release from studies, she could only go to Number 30 and mope.

Nancy could not see Bob Endress again. _That_ was something beside a mere provocation of spirit. The girl felt that it was serious.

As Jennie had suggested, she wished to warn Bob to say nothing about where he had met her before. Of course, Grace Montgomery could not see the boy, either. But Cora was free to pump Bob, and Nancy was sure her roommate would worm out of him the whole story of how he had first met Nancy.

"He's been looking for you," whispered Jennie to Nancy at supper, the first night following the imposition of the punishment. "I saw him skating with Corinne and some of the other big girls. I don't know whether he saw Cora, or not."

"Oh, dear, Jennie!" cried Nancy. "I wish you would warn him."

"I?" exclaimed the other. "I never was introduced to him."

"Oh!"

"But that wouldn't make any difference," declared the fun-loving girl, with a smile. "I'm not afraid of boys; they don't bite."

"He's a real nice boy, I believe," said Nancy.

"So they all say."

"And he'd understand, I am sure," continued Nancy. "If he was only warned what harm his telling might do me----"