"Leave it to me!" cried Jennie. "I'll skate with him to-morrow--if he's on the ice."

Nancy's life in the school was made far more miserable now by Cora Rathmore and her friends. All these girls, who had enjoyed the spread bought with Nancy's money, but who had been punished by the princ.i.p.al, were determined to look upon Nancy as guilty of "telling on them."

Nor did they give her any chance to answer the charge. Cora would not even speak to her in their room. If any of the other girls came in, Cora said:

"Oh, come over to your room. We can't talk here, where there is a telltale around."

This was said _at_ Nancy; but none of them actually addressed her.

Besides, Cora began to hint that she knew something against Nancy that she was keeping in reserve.

"Oh, yes! she holds her head up awful proud," Cora observed in Nancy's hearing. "But you just wait!"

"Wait for what, Cora?" asked one of the girls.

"Wait till I get a letter. I'll know all about Miss Telltale soon."

And after that Nancy's worst fears were realized by the news that Jennie Bruce brought her. Jennie had managed to see and have a private interview with Bob Endress.

"And of course, he's managed to do it," grumbled Jennie.

"Done what? Oh! done what?" cried Nancy, clasping her hands.

"Well, Cora wormed something out of him. He told her how you were the girl who saved him from drowning last summer."

"Then it'll all come out!" groaned Nancy.

"That's according. Cora knows where you lived before you came to Pinewood to school."

"And she'll write to Malden. I believe she _has_ done so."

"But perhaps whoever she knows there won't know you."

"But they'll learn about Higbee School, and then they can trace me to it. I know if anybody wrote to Miss Prentice she'd tell all about me.

She'd think it her duty."

"Mean old thing!" declared Jennie.

"Oh, Jennie! it's going to be awful hard," said poor Nancy. "You'd better not be too friendly with me. The girls are all bound to look down on me."

"Don't be so foolish! Of course they won't."

But Nancy shook her head. She had been all through the same trouble so many times before. With every incoming cla.s.s of new girls at Higbee School it had been the same. She had been "the girl of mystery."

"If you could only make that old lawyer tell the truth about you, Nance!" exclaimed Jennie.

"But perhaps he _is_ telling the truth."

"Not much, he isn't."

"Why, you're as bad as Scorch O'Brien," declared Nancy, with half a smile.

"That boy's got some brains, all right," observed Jennie, quickly. "It does not sound reasonable that, during all these years, Mr. Gordon would not have probed into the matter and learned something about your real antecedents."

Nancy shook her head, slowly. "It may all be true. Maybe it is just kind-heartedness that has kept him acting as intermediary between the persons who furnish money for my education, and myself."

"And why does he tip you so generously?"

"Oh--er--Well, I don't know."

"Is that out of his own pocket, do you think?" asked the shrewd Jennie.

"Well----"

"Does this 'Old Gordon,' as your friend Scorch calls him, really seem like a man given to outbursts of charity, Nance?"

"Why--why, I never saw him but once," replied Nancy.

"But did he impress you as being of a philanthropic nature?" urged her friend.

"No-oo."

"I thought not," observed Jennie. "Just because Scorch reminded him of your existence wasn't likely to make him send you money. I bet he handles plenty more belonging to you that you never see."

"But see to what an expensive school he has sent me!" cried Nancy.

"Maybe he was obliged to do so. Perhaps he only does just what he is told to do, after all. There may be somebody behind Mr. Gordon, who is watching both him and you."

"My goodness! You make it all more mysterious than it was before,"

sighed Nancy. "Just the same, if these girls learn all about me they'll spread it around that I'm just a foundling, and that n.o.body knows anything about me. It is going to be dreadfully hard."

"Now, you pluck up your spirit, Nance Nelson!" commanded Jennie Bruce.

"Don't be so milk-and-watery. You're just as good as they are."

"I don't know. At least, my folks may not have been as good as _their_ folks."

"Well, I'd never let 'em guess it," cried Jennie. "You're scared before you are hurt, Nance; that's what is the matter with you."

CHAPTER XVI

IT COMES TO A HEAD

Jennie Bruce was just as full of good humor as she could be. She may have lacked reverence for teachers, precedent, the dignity of the seniors, and honored custom; but n.o.body with a normal mind could really be angry with her.

Her deportment marks were dreadfully low; but she was quick at her studies and was really too kind-hearted to _mean_ to bother the teachers.