She managed to get in and out of a dozen sc.r.a.pes a day. Yet the rollicking good-nature of the girl, and her frank honesty did much to save her from serious punishment.

Jennie went on her care-free way, a.s.sured in her own mind that certain of the rules of Pinewood Hall were only made to be broken. If a thought came to her in cla.s.s, or a desire to communicate with another scholar, she could no more resist the temptation than she could fly.

"Miss Bruce! half an hour this afternoon on grammar rules for talking!"

"Oh, Miss Maybrick! I'm so sorry. I didn't think."

"Learn to think, then."

"Jennie, if you _must_ make such faces, please do so out of the view of your cla.s.smates, I beg." This from gentle Miss Meader.

"I--I was just trying how it felt to be strangled with a cord. It says here the _Thuggee_ did it in India as a religious practice."

"That's enough, Jennie!" as a giggle arose from the roomful of girls.

"Your excuses are worse than your sins."

And her thirst for knowledge! Of course, it was a desire for information that was by no possibility of any value to either herself or the cla.s.s.

"Is this sentence good English, Miss Halliday?" asked Jennie, after scribbling industriously for some minutes, and then reading from her paper: "'A girl was criticised by her teacher for the use of the word "that," but it was proved that that "that" that that girl used was that "that" that that girl should have used.' Is that right?"

"That is perfectly correct, Jennie," said the English teacher, grimly, when the cla.s.s had come to order, "but _you_ are altogether wrong. You may show me that sentence written plainly forty times when you come to the cla.s.s to-morrow."

"Zowie!" murmured Jennie in Nancy's ear as they were excused. "I bet she thought that hurt."

But the ingenious Jennie had recourse to a typewriter in one of the offices which the girls could use if they wished. She put in forty slips of tissue paper, with carbon sheets between each two, and wrote the troublesome sentence on all forty slips at once!

"You know very well this was not what I meant when I gave you the task, Jennie," commented Miss Halliday, yet having hard work not to smile.

"You particularly said to write it plainly," returned the demure Jennie.

"And what could be plainer than typewriting?"

These jokes, and their like, made her beloved by a certain number of the girls, amused the others, and sometimes bothered her teachers a good deal.

But there was not a girl in all Pinewood Hall who would have been of such help to Nancy Nelson at this juncture as Jennie Bruce.

When Jennie was out of the building in recreation time, Nancy either kept close in Number 30, or crept away to some empty office and conned her lesson books industriously.

When Jennie was at hand Nancy began to see that she need fear little trouble from the Montgomery clique. They were all afraid of Jennie's sharp tongue. And after Cora had tried to be nasty to Nancy before a crowd a couple of times, and Jennie had turned the laugh against her, Nancy's enemies learned better.

But one noon Grace Montgomery received a letter which, after reading, she pa.s.sed around among her particular friends. It was eagerly read, especially by Cora Rathmore.

That young lady immediately walked over to Nancy, who was sitting alone reading, and she shook the letter in the surprised girl's face.

"Now I've got you, Miss!" she fairly hissed.

Nancy looked up, startled, but could not speak.

"Now we know where you came from, and what and who you are, Nancy Nelson!" pursued Cora. "A girl like you--a n.o.body--a foundling--Oh! I'll see if I have got to a.s.sociate with such _sc.u.m_!"

She wheeled sharply away, and had Nancy recovered her powers of speech she would have had no time to reply to this tirade.

But Nancy could not have spoken just then to save her life! The blow had fallen at last. All she had feared since coming to Pinewood Hall was now about to be realized.

In some way Grace Montgomery had learned the particulars of her early life at Higbee School, though Cora might not have found it out, and Grace had put the letter into the hands of Nancy's roommate.

What Cora would first do poor Nancy did not know. There would be some terrible "blowup" the girl was sure. The story would spread all over the school. All the girls must know that she was a mere n.o.body, apparently dependent upon charity for her education and even for her food.

Oh! if she could only escape from it all--run away from Pinewood--go somewhere so far, or so hidden, that none of these proud girls coming from rich families could ever find and taunt her with her own miserable story.

Yes, Nancy thought earnestly that afternoon of running away. Any existence, it seemed to her then, would be better than suffering the unkind looks and the doubtful whispers of her school companions.

Nancy was not afraid of ordinary things. The possibility of hunger and cold did not daunt her. She knew that, if she left the school secretly, and ran away and found a place to work, she might often be in need. But if she could only go where people would not ask questions!

She was quite as old as Scorch O'Brien, she thought. And see how independent that flame-haired youngster was! Nancy knew she could take care of herself alone in the city as well as Scorch. She had enough money left to get her to Cincinnati, and something over.

How she got through her lessons after dinner she never knew; but she did, somehow. Then she crept up to her dormitory and to her delight found it empty. She gathered together a few of her simplest possessions and crammed them into her handbag. She took only those things that would not be at once missed. She touched nothing on her bureau.

When she had locked the bag she opened the window and peered out. It was already growing dark; but far away, on the frozen river, she could hear the ring of skates and the silvery shouts of laughter from the girls.

n.o.body stirred in the pinewood, nor in the shrubbery closer to the Hall.

Nancy waited for a minute to see if she was observed, and then she tossed the bag into the middle of a clump of bushes not far from her window.

She believed n.o.body had seen her. She closed the sash and picked up her cap and coat. She rolled these into as small and compact a bundle as possible and then left the room quietly.

Corinne Pevay was coming through the corridor.

"Hullo, Nancy Nelson!" she said, cheerfully, putting her hand upon the younger girl's shoulder. "What did you want to be such a perfect little brick for?"

"I--I don't know what you mean?" quoth Nancy, shrinking under the senior's touch.

"Why, if you'd told Madame Schakael all about it the other night when she caught you in Number 40, do you suppose she would have punished you so harshly?"

"I--I couldn't tell on them," murmured Nancy, trying to hide her bundle.

"No. But what good did it do to try and save girls like Montgomery? They blame you, just the same."

Nancy nodded, but said nothing.

"But _I_ know that you didn't tell on them; and so does Jennie Bruce.

Madame Schakael learned the names of the culprits by going from door to door and finding out who were absent from their rooms. She did not have to go to Number 30 at all. And you got no thanks for trying to shield them."

Nancy continued silent.

"And one of them told _me_," said Corinne, pointedly, "that _you_ paid for all those goodies they gorged themselves on; yet they froze you out of the party. Is that right?"

"Oh, I--I'd rather not say, Miss Pevay," stammered Nancy.

"Humph! Well, you're a funny kid," said the senior, leaving her. "You'll never get along in this girls' menagerie if you let 'em walk all over you."