Nancy had reached the foot of the stairs and was starting up. She whirled suddenly to face her tormentor. The coat and cap fell from her grasp. She clenched her hands tightly and cried:

"Then what _am_ I, Cora? What have I done that makes me so bad in your eyes? What have you got against me?"

"You're a n.o.body. You came from a charity school. The woman who is princ.i.p.al doesn't know where you came from. Your parents may be in jail for all anybody knows," returned Cora.

"You haven't any people, and you stayed in that Higbee School at Maiden all the year round--vacations and all. The girls didn't like you there any more than they do here.

"Ha! Miss n.o.body from No-place-at-all! that's what you are!" sneered Nancy's roommate. "How do you expect the nice girls here at Pinewood Hall will want to a.s.sociate with you?

"And let me tell you, Miss, that _I_ refuse to room with you another day. I shall tell Madame Schakael so right now!" concluded Cora, her face very red and her black eyes flashing angrily.

CHAPTER XVII

A RIFT IN THE CLOUDS

None of the other girls had taken part in this discussion; but they all chanced to be members of the party that had partaken of the famous spread in Number 30 when Nancy's money paid for the goodies out of the enjoyment of which she had been crowded.

They were all, save Cora, paying the price, like Nancy, of being found out of their rooms after curfew by the princ.i.p.al of Pinewood Hall. All had suffered alike. Cora had been the only one to escape.

As it chanced, Cora had _not_ been out of her room. The girls were not punished for eating ice cream and macaroons in secret, and none of them had been questioned about the incident save Nancy herself.

They had all, however, urged by Cora and Grace Montgomery, been sure that Nancy had "got even" by reporting them to the teachers. Maybe, if Cora had not so urged this--had not been so confident of Nancy's crime, in fact--the other girls might have stopped to think that _she_ was being punished equally with themselves, and that only Cora had escaped.

Just the same, some of them might on this evening have taken Nancy's part had not Cora Rathmore made so much of the report upon Nancy's character that Grace Montgomery had received from a friend in Malden.

n.o.body had seen the letter (which came under cover for Grace from her sister at home, and was therefore not examined by Madame Schakael) save Grace herself and Cora. The latter had flown into a pa.s.sion immediately, and had declared that she would no longer remain in the same room with a "charity foundling."

Without stopping to think, these other girls were carried away by Cora's eloquence. When Nancy turned to face them from the lower stair of the flight leading up to the West Side dormitories, she was like a sheep cornered by a pack of dogs.

The shrill voice of the angry Cora carried much farther than she had intended, however. Suddenly, at the top of the flight, appeared Corinne Pevay, captain of the West Side.

"What is the trouble, _mes enfants_?" she demanded. "Why all the outburst of variegated sounds, Cora? Is it a convention of the Freshman Calliope Society; or merely a discussion of the question: Votes for Women?"

Cora had become silent instantly. Nancy was winking back her tears, and would not turn around. The other girls did not feel called upon to speak.

"'Silence was her answer; Low she bowed her head!'" chanted Corinne, in a sing-song tone. "It sounded like a washerwomen's convention, and now it has suddenly changed to a Quaker meeting. Come! what's the trouble?"

and she spoke more sharply as she began to descend the stairs.

"None of your business, Miss!" snapped the black-eyed girl, made even angrier at this interruption.

"Wrong Cora--wrong. It _is_ my business. Somebody will call me to account for it if you West Side infants raise ructions in the main hall.

You know that. So, out with the difficulty."

Cora still remained scornfully silent.

"It is about Nancy, here, again, I suppose," said Corinne, finally reaching Nancy's side, and resting one hand lightly on the latter's shoulders. "You girls seem unable to annoy anybody else but Nancy Nelson. And if I were she"--she was coolly looking around the group and soon identified them as the party that had been punished with Nancy over Number 30's spread,--"I never would stand it.

"She is too easy.... That is what is the matter with her. When Madame Schakael found her in Jennie's room that night she ought to have told just how she had been crowded out of her own room--and after paying for all the goodies you girls stuffed yourselves with, too!

"Why, I'd be ashamed! She took her punishment and never said a word.

Jennie can prove _that_. And all you little fools have laid your punishment to _her_. And after eating her spread----"

"That isn't so!" snapped Cora, in a rage.

"What isn't so?"

"She knows she's going to be paid back for what she spent on the supper," declared Cora.

"Good! I hope she will be paid back. But you can't pay her back for the mean way you have treated her," declared the senior, with some warmth.

"I don't want to! I don't want to!" almost screamed Cora. "Do you think I am going to have anything to do with a girl who doesn't even know who she _is_?"

"What do you mean, Cora?" asked Corinne, quickly.

"That girl," cried Cora, pointing a quivering finger at the silent Nancy, "was just found by somebody when she was a baby and was sent to a charity school--the Higbee Endowment School in Maiden, it's called.

"She's a foundling. Her parents deserted her--or they were sent to jail--and other people sent this girl to school. She knows it's so! She daren't say it isn't!" continued the enraged Cora.

"She's just a little Miss n.o.body. If such girls as she, without family or friends, are going to come to Pinewood Hall, I am sure _my_ mother won't want me to stay here. And one thing I _am_ very sure of," pursued Cora. "I will _not_ remain in Number 30 with this--this nameless girl that no one knows anything about."

"Quite so, Miss Rathmore," observed a quiet voice behind the excited Cora. "What you say is emphatic, at least; and it really seems to be in earnest. Therefore, it shall have my respectful consideration."

A horrified silence fell upon the group of girls at the foot of the stairs.

"Miss Pevay," said the Madame, calmly, "bring Nancy Nelson and Cora Rathmore to my office at once. What is that on the floor?"

The little lady pointed to Nancy's coat and cap. Nancy, with dry lips, told her.

"Have you been out without permission at this hour, Nancy?" asked the Madame.

"No, Madame."

"Bring the coat and cap. At once!" commanded the Madame, and led the way into her own suite of offices.

Like three prisoners bound for the stake, the three girls followed. Even Corinne felt that she had done wrong in allowing this squabble to continue in the public hall.

The other girls did not even dare whisper at first after the Madame and the three girls were behind the closed door of the Madame's anteroom. It was seldom that the princ.i.p.al of Pinewood Hall took the punishment, or interrogation, of offenders into her own hands. When she did it was a solemn moment for all concerned.

And the girls gathered at the bottom of the West Side stairway felt this solemnity. They whispered together fearfully until suddenly Jennie Bruce burst in from outdoors.

"Hullo, girls! what's gone wrong?" she demanded, swinging a small bag in her hand.

"You may well say 'What's gone wrong?'" declared Judy Craig, Belle Macdonald's chum. "The Madame caught poor Cora in an awful stew----"