Nancy heard the other girls coming down the path now. The danger was over and she suddenly realized that she must look a perfect fright.

"N-never mind! Thanks!" she blurted out, and turning sharply, dashed into the cover of the thicket and was almost instantly out of sight--out of sound, as well.

But she was so excited that she did not think again how she looked until she appeared before Miss Trigg.

The short-sighted teacher looked up at her--stared, evidently without identifying her charge for the moment--and then gave voice.

"Nancy! Nancy Nelson! Whatever have you been doing to yourself?"

"I--I----"

Nancy had already heard the motor get under way. She knew that the boy and his friends were now out of hearing, or reach.

"Aren't these lilies pretty?" she asked, holding out the flowers as a peace-offering to Miss Trigg.

"_What?_" screamed the teacher, getting up nimbly, and backing away from the mud-bedaubed figure of the girl. "Your feet are wet! Did--did you _dare_ get into such a mess, just to get those--those _weeds_?"

Nancy nodded. It was true. Her bedrabblement had been the forerunner of the gift of flowers from the boy.

"Well! of all things!" gasped Miss Trigg.

"I--I believe you've taken leave of your senses. Why--why, whatever will people think of you, going home? We--we can't ride in the car. They wouldn't let you get on. And I'd be ashamed to be seen with you."

"Oh! I'm sorry, Miss Trigg," murmured Nancy.

"Being sorry won't take the mud off that dress--or bring a new pair of stockings--or clean those boots. We've got to have a cab--a closed cab.

I wouldn't go home with you in anything else."

"I--I'll go home alone, Miss Trigg," said the contrite girl.

"No! While Miss Prentice is away you shall never again be out of my sight in waking hours--no, Miss! And for a bunch of weeds!"

"Oh Miss Trigg! they are _so-o_ pretty----"

"Don't you say another word!" commanded the teacher. "And you stand right here until I can signal a cab on the drive below. There, there's one now!"

The teacher burst through the bushes and waved madly to a taxi rolling slowly along the macadam below the hill. The driver saw her and stopped.

"Come!" spoke Miss Trigg. "Here! give me those--those _things_."

She s.n.a.t.c.hed the lilies from Nancy's hand and flung them in the path.

The girl looked back at them longingly; but she thought it best to trifle with the teacher no further.

So she followed slowly the gaunt, angry woman down the steep path, and only the memory of the boy's gift remained with her through the rest of the days of that last vacation at Higbee School.

Nancy was in disgrace with Miss Trigg, and was very lonely. She wondered who the boy was--and where he lived--and who the girls were with him--and if he had suffered any bad result from his adventure.

Above all, she wondered if she should ever see him again.

But that was not likely. Miss Prentice came home in a week, and in another week the school would open.

Mr. Gordon had sent the ticket for Nancy's fare to Clintondale. Her modest trunk was packed. Miss Prentice bade her a perfunctory good-bye.

It was a cold farewell, indeed, to the only home the girl could remember and in which she had lived for at least three-quarters of her life.

But as the cab which was to take her to the railway station was about to start, Miss Trigg hurried out. She had scarcely recovered from the shock of Nancy's adventure at the millpond; but after all there was a spark of human feeling deep down in the teacher's heart.

"I--I hope you'll do well, Nancy," she stammered. "Do--_do_ keep up well in your studies and be a credit to us. And for mercy's sake don't venture into a pond again after nasty weeds. It's not--not ladylike."

Nancy thought she was going to kiss her. But it had been a long time since Miss Trigg had kissed anybody, and it is doubtful if she really knew how. So she thought better of it, shook hands with Nancy in a mannish way, turned abruptly, and stalked back into the house.

The taxi rolled away, and Nancy winked back the tears. It was not hard.

After all, the orphan girl was leaving nothing behind that she really _loved_.

CHAPTER IV

BEARDING THE LION

Nancy Nelson's hopes ran high. She was going out into a new world--the world of Pinewood Hall. The girls would all be strangers to her there; not one of them would know her history--or, rather, her lack of a history.

But as to the latter, the girl was determined to learn all there was to know about herself before she arrived at Pinewood.

In two hours the train would be in Cincinnati. She had but half an hour--or less--to wait for the train on the other road to Clintondale.

But she had studied the time-table and she knew that, by waiting four hours in Cincinnati, she could get another train to her destination.

She was to telegraph back to Miss Prentice when she arrived at Cincinnati. At the same time she was supposed to telegraph ahead to the princ.i.p.al of Pinewood Hall,--Madame Schakael. This had all been arranged beforehand; Nancy had been thoroughly instructed by Miss Prentice.

But the girl had made up her mind not to send the dispatch on to Pinewood Hall until she was ready to leave Cincinnati. There should be no telegraphing back and forth between the two schoolmistresses if she could help it.

In the interim Nancy proposed to find Mr. Gordon's office and have the long-wished-for interview with the man whom she called her guardian. All the guardians she had ever read of seemed to have a much deeper interest in their wards than this lawyer had shown in her.

The cab driver checked her trunk and then spoke a word to the conductor of the train that would take the girl to Cincinnati. But Nancy felt quite independent and "grown up."

She asked the conductor about stopping over at the big city until the later train and he a.s.sured her that she would need no stop-over check for that. She spent a good part of the time until she got to Cincinnati inventing speeches which she would make to Mr. Gordon when she reached his office.

She filed the telegram to Miss Prentice as soon as she got off the train; then she checked her handbag at the parcel counter and walked out of the station.

Of course, she had no idea in which direction South Wall Street lay; but she knew a policeman when she saw one, and believed those minions of the law to be fountains of information.

She told the officer exactly what she wanted to do--to go to the lawyer's office and return to the station in time for the afternoon train to Clintondale.

"It's quite a little walk, Miss, and you might get turned around.

Suppose I put you into a taxi and take the man's number, and he can bring you back, if you like?"

Nancy had some few dollars in her pocketbook; but she was careful to have the policeman estimate the cost of her cab-ride, which he kindly did. She would have sufficient to pay for this, and a luncheon, as well, if she got back in season. So the girl bravely entered the taxi-cab and was whirled through the unfamiliar streets to the lawyer's office.