[Ill.u.s.tration: NANCY FLASHED PAST THEM.]

Before the older girls reached the rounding stake, Nancy flashed past them. The junior spurted, came even with Nancy for a moment at and turn, and then dropped back, to become a bad third in the race. She could never recover after that spurt.

But the French-Canadian girl held on grimly. Slowly she crept up on the freshman. The seniors shouted for their champion; but the rest of the school was calling Nancy home!

"Oh, Nancy! Oh, Nancy! Come on!"

Nancy heard Jennie Bruce's voice above all the turmoil ahead. Her eyes had begun to water, and the white, badly cut-up ice of the straight course seemed to waver before her.

At her ear she could hear Corinne's labored breathing. The ring of her rival's skates rasped upon the younger girl's nerves, too.

She was under a great strain now. Another full lap would have been more than she could have skated without a breakdown. It was being pressed so close and hard that was wearing Nancy down. She was not used to such contests.

But her roommate's cracked voice, shouting again and again for her, kept Nancy to the mark. Corinne should _not_ pa.s.s her!

She flung herself forward against the wind and worked with teeth that sank into her lip and drew the blood! On--on--on----

She felt something against her hands--against her breast--she was tangled up in it! Something had fouled her, and she had failed, for Corinne swept by at that moment.

And then the girls caught her--Jennie and many of her own cla.s.s, as well as some of the older girls. They were cheering her, and praising her work--for it was the tape she had run against.

The race was finished and Nancy had won!

Three-quarters of the school were on the ice. Something like three hundred girls can make a lot of noise!

And there was only a tiny group that broke away from the main body and went home in the sulks because Nancy had won the race. Of course this was the Montgomery clique.

"I can tell you right now who _won't_ be president of our cla.s.s,"

whispered Jennie to Cora Rathmore before the latter got away in Grace Montgomery's train.

"I suppose you think Nancy Nelson will!" snapped Cora.

It was the first time the idea had come into Jennie's mind.

It was only three days before the breaking up for the holidays.

Everybody was so enthusiastic about Nancy, that Jennie's work was half done for her.

To see the quietest girl in the school, yet the one who stood highest in her own cla.s.s, praised and feted by the seniors, made Nancy's fellow-cla.s.smates consider her of more importance than ever before.

So Jennie's work was easy. She went among the freshies and whispered--first to one alone, then to two together, then to little groups. And the burden of her tale was always the same:

"The Madame will stand for her--you see! She's the best little sport there is in the cla.s.s. She's scarcely had a mark against her, yet she's no goody-goody.

"See how she stood for those other girls who treated her so meanly--and never opened her mouth. Why, the Madame could have burned her at the stake and Nance would never have said a word to incriminate that Montgomery crowd.

"And there won't be a teacher to object. She's on all their good books.

Me? Of course I've an axe to grind," and Jennie laughed. "She's my roommate, and if she gets the 'high hat' I'll hope to bask in her reflected glory."

Jennie Bruce was an excellent politician. Had it lain with the girls alone, lively Jennie might have been president of the freshman cla.s.s herself. But the girls knew that the Madame would never allow it.

Jennie's record for the weeks she had been a student at Pinewood Hall precluded such an honor.

The day before the break-up the members of the freshman cla.s.s voted for president. Each girl sealed her vote in an envelope and the numbered envelopes were pa.s.sed into the Madame's office.

At supper that night, at the time when the school captains marched around the room "to inspect the girls' hair-ribbons," as Jennie said, Corinne brought a high, old-fashioned, much dented beaver hat in her hand.

_That_ didn't tell the eager freshmen anything, for both the princ.i.p.al candidates for president of the cla.s.s had been from the girls rooming on the West Side, and therefore were under Corinne's jurisdiction.

Grace Montgomery's friends began to cheer for her. The friends of the other candidates--and there were several--kept still.

"Wait!" advised Jennie, in a stage whisper. "We can afford to yell all the louder a little later--maybe."

But Corinne tantalized the smaller girls by walking all around the tables the first time without putting the tall hat on any girl's head.

Once or twice she hesitated behind a girl's chair; but that only made the others laugh, for they knew that _those_ particular girls had had no chance of election anyway.

"Come on!" shouted Cora. "You might as well bring it over here where it belongs," and she put an arm over the blushing Grace's shoulders.

But Grace did her blushing for nothing. Corinne crossed the room swiftly, came straight to the corner where Jennie sat, and----

Drew the hat firmly down over Nancy Nelson's ears!

Nancy could scarcely believe it. She--Miss n.o.body from Nowhere--the most popular girl in her cla.s.s? It was like a dream--only, as she admitted to Jennie, laughing, it was a dreadfully noisy dream!

Corinne could scarcely command silence long enough to read the result of the balloting. Nancy had received nearly one-half of the freshman vote.

Grace Montgomery had mustered only eight ballots, while the remainder were scattered among half a dozen other candidates.

The disappointed girls, all but Grace, cheered Nancy, too--and hugged her, and made her march ahead of the cla.s.s, all around the big dining room, and then into the hall, which was given up to the use of the freshman cla.s.s for that particular evening.

There the complete organization of the cla.s.s was arranged, and Nancy presided with pretty dignity, and even Grace Montgomery and her friends had to acknowledge the leadership of the girl whom they had so ill-treated for the past weeks.

Many of the girls went home the next day for the ten days' vacation.

Those who lived at a distance, however, remained at Pinewood. So Nancy was not alone over the short vacation as she wont to be at Higbee School.

Jennie lived not far from Cincinnati, and she couldn't remain away from home at Christmas.

"I wish you were going with me, you dear old thing!" she said to Nancy, hugging her. "You wait till I tell mother about you! You shall go home with me at Easter--if that Old Gordon will let you; and if you like it at my home we'll have you part of the long vacation, too.

"And I'm going to get my big brother, John, to take me into the city while I'm home, and I'm going to see Scorch. Just think! Maybe we can find out all about what Mr. Gordon is hiding from you."

"If he is hiding anything, Jennie," said Nancy, shaking her head.

And yet, after all the wonderful things that had happened to her of late, Nancy could almost believe that even the mystery of her ident.i.ty might in time be solved.

CHAPTER XXI

SENATOR MONTGOMERY