INTRODUCTIONS
"Oh, my auntie!" murmured Amelia Boggs, using most uncommendable
slang. "Stung!"
But Laura Polk, if inclined to be boisterous and rather rude in her
jokes, was by no means petty. She burst into such a good-natured
and disarming laugh that the girl in brown was forced to join her.
"There, Laura," said Bess Harley, "the biter for once is the
bitten. I hope you are properly overcome."
Nan Sherwood likewise hastened to offer the new girl her hand.
"I am glad to greet you, Rhoda Hammond," she said sympathetically.
"You must not mind our animal spirits. We just do slop over at this
time, my dear. Wait till you see how gentle and decorous we have to
be after the semester really begins. This is only letting off
steam, you know."
"Do you meet all newcomers with the same grade of hospitality?"
asked Rhoda Hammond, with more than a little sarcasm in both her
words and tone.
"Only more so," Bess Harley assured her. "Oh, Nan! consider what
they did to us when we came here for the first time last September.
'Member?"
Nan nodded with sudden gravity in her pretty face. She was not
likely to forget that trying time. She had been on a very different
footing with her schoolmates for the first few weeks of her life at
Lakeview Hall than she was now.
Rhoda Hammond, the new girl, seemed to apprehend something of this
change, for she said quickly and with much good sense:
"Well, if you two could stand it, and are evidently so much thought
of now, I'll grin and bear it, too. Though it isn't just as we are
taught to treat strangers out home. At Rose Ranch if a person is a
tenderfoot we try to make it particularly easy for him."
"Oh, my dear," drawled Bess, her eyes dancing, "it works just the
opposite at a girls' boarding school, believe me!"
Her chum, Nan, was for the moment not in a laughing mood. She could
scarcely realize now that she was the same Nan Sherwood who had
come so wonderingly and timidly to Lakeview Hall.
Of the Sherwoods there were only Nan and her father and mother.
They were an especially warmly attached trio and probably, if a
most wonderful and startling thing had not happened, Nan and Momsey
and Papa Sherwood would never have been separated, or been fairly
shaken out of their family existence, as they had been just about a
year before this present story opens.
The Sherwoods lived in a little cottage on Amity Street in
Tillbury. Bess Harley lived with her parents and brothers and
sisters in the same town; but they were much better off financially
than the Sherwoods. Mr. Sherwood was a foreman in the Atwater
Mills, and when that company abruptly closed down, Nan's father was
thrown out of work and the prospect of real poverty stared the
Sherwoods in the face.
Then the unexpected happened. A distant relative of Mrs. Sherwood's
died, leaving her some property in Scotland. But it was necessary
for her to appear personally before the Scotch courts to obtain
Hughie Blake's fortune.
Circumstances were such, however, that her parents could not take
Nan with them. It was a hard blow to the girl; but she was plucky
and ready to accept the determination of Momsey and Papa Sherwood.
When they started for Scotland, Nan started for Pine Camp with her
Uncle Henry, and the first book of this series relates for the most
part Nan's exciting adventures in the lumber region of the Michigan
Peninsula, under the title of: "Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp; Or, the
Old Lumberman's Secret."
As has been mentioned, Nan and her chum, Bess Harley, had come to
Lakeview Hall the previous September. The matter of Momsey's
fortune had not then been settled in the Scotch courts; but enough
money had been advanced to make it possible for Nan to accompany
her chum to the very good boarding school on the shore of Lake
Huron.
In "Nan Sherwood at Lakeview Hall; Or, the Mystery of the Haunted
Boathouse," the two friends are first introduced to boarding-school
life, and to this very merry, if somewhat thoughtless, company of
girls that have already been brought to the attention of the reader
in our present volume.
They were for the most part nice girls and, at heart, kindly
intentioned; but Nan had gone through some harsh experiences, as
well as exciting times, during the fall and winter semester at
Lakeview Hall. She had made friends, as she always did; and the
Masons, Grace and Walter, determined to have her with them in
Chicago over the holidays. Therefore, in the third volume of the
series, "Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays; Or, Rescuing the
Runaways," we find Nan and her chum with their friends in the great
city of the Lakes.
During those two weeks of absence from school Nan certainly had
experienced some exciting times. Included in her adventures were
her experiences in rescuing two foolish country girls who had run
away to be motion picture actresses. In addition Nan Sherwood had
saved little Inez, a street child, and had taken her back to "the
little dwelling in amity," as Papa Sherwood called their Tillbury
home. For Nan's parents had returned from across the seas, and she
was beginning this second semester at Lakeview Hall in a much
happier state of mind in every way than she had begun the first
one.
It was only to be expected that Nan would try to make the coming of
the girl in brown, Rhoda Hammond, more pleasant than her own first
appearance at school had been.
But the girls who had remained at the Hall over the holidays were
fairly wild. At least, Mrs. Cupp said so, and Mrs. Cupp, Doctor
Beulah Prescott's housekeeper, ought to know for she had had
complete charge of the crowd during the intermission of studies.
"And, believe me," sighed Laura Polk, "we've led the dear some
dance."
Mrs. Cupp looked very stern now as she suddenly appeared from her
office at the end of the big hall. She scarcely responded to the
greetings of the girls who had returned--not even to Nan's--but
asked in a most forbidding tone:
"Who is there new? Girls who have for the first time arrived, come
into my office at once. There is time for the usual formalities
before supper."
"Oh, my dear," murmured Bess Harley wickedly, and loud enough for
the girl in brown to hear her, "she is in a dreadful temper. She
certainly will put these poor sawneys through the wringer tonight."
Rhoda Hammond evidently took this "with a grain of salt." She
asked, before going to the office:
"What sort of instrument of torture is the 'wringer,' please?"
"I am speaking in metaphor," explained Bess. "But you wait! She
will wring tears from your eyes before she gets through with you.
As the little girls say, you can see her 'mad is up.'"
"Oh, now, Elizabeth," warned Nan, "don't scare her."
Rhoda walked away without another word. Bess looked after her with
an admiring light in her eyes.
"Oh, Nan! isn't she beautifully dressed?"
"Richly dressed, I agree," said Nan. "But Mrs. Cupp will have
something to say about that."
"I know," giggled the wicked and slangy Bess. "She'll give her an
earful about dressing 'out of order.' She is worse than Linda."
"No. Better," said Nan confidently. "Whoever chose that girl's
outfit showed beautiful taste, even if she is dressed much too
richly for the standard of Lakeview Hall."
Linking arms a little later, when the supper gong sounded, the two
friends from Tillbury sought the pleasant dining-room where the
whole school--"primes" as well as the four upper divisions--ate at
long tables, with an instructor in charge of each division.
But discipline was relaxed to-night, as it was always at such
times. Even Mrs. Cupp, who, all through the meal, marched up and
down the room with a hawk eye on everything and everybody, was less
strict than ordinarily.
The moment Nan Sherwood appeared the little girls hailed her as
their chum and "Big Sister." Nothing would do but she must sit at
their table and share their food for this one meal.
"Oh, dear, Nan!" cried one little miss, "did you bring back
Beautiful Beulah all safe and sound with you? Shall we have her to
play with again this term?"
"Why, bless you, honey!" returned the bigger girl, "I did not even
take the doll away. Mrs. Cupp has charge of it, and if she lets me,
we will take it up into Room Seven, Corridor Four, to-morrow."
"Oh, won't that be nice?" acclaimed the little girls, for Nan's big
doll was an institution at Lakeview Hall among more than the
children in the primary department.
But at the end of the meal Nan was dragged away by the older girls.
They were an excited and hilarious crowd.
"There's something doing!" whispered Bess in Nan's ear. "That new
girl is on our corridor. You know the room that was shut up all
last term?"
"Number eight?"
"That is the one. Rhoda has got it. And what do you think?"
"Almost any mischief," replied Nan, with dancing eyes.
"Oh, now, Nan! Well, Laura has told her that the room is haunted.
Says a girl died there two years ago and it's never been used
since. And so now her ghost will be sure to haunt it--"
"I think that is both mean and silly of Laura," interrupted Nan,
with vigor. "She will have some of these little girls, who will be
bound to hear the tale, scared half to death. Is that poor girl
going to live in Number Eight alone?"
"She is until somebody else comes to mate with her," said Bess
carelessly. "Come on, old Poky. We're going to have some fun with
that wild Westerner."
"I'll go along," agreed Nan, smiling again, "if only to make sure
that you crazy ones do not go too far in your hazing."