Once in the hallway, the young people gazed rather fearfully about. But
the place seemed quite empty of all human beings, although every door
was stretched wide open; and through the long windows in the little
drawing-room opening straight onto the lawn the rain was beating
furiously.
"You had better shut up everything," ordered Edward Bacon. "The place
will be flooded in a minute."
There were several bedrooms on the same floor, the villa being a
one-story cottage; but they also were empty, as could be plainly seen
from the open doors. Presently the students had closed all the casements
against the driving rain and gathered in the drawing-room.
"I feel like Goldilocks and the three bears," remarked Nancy, half
laughing and half crying as she sat down in the drawing-room and looked
about her with the air of a martyred saint.
We are obliged to admit that Nancy, having sacrificed her best hat, felt
that she had made sufficient recompense for her sins.
The room was very simply furnished with wicker chairs and chintz
curtains, but it possessed the peculiar charm of the English cottage
with its deep casement windows, low ceilings and polished hardwood
floors.
"I don't seem to know this house," observed the young man named Bulger.
"I was here last spring," said Bixby. "It was closed then. The owner is
usually abroad, a gardener told me."
"Well, whoever he is, I hope heaven will reward him for giving us
shelter in the time of storm," remarked Edward.
Nancy shivered.
"Miss Brown is cold," exclaimed one of the students. "Do you suppose the
proprietor would mind if we set a match to his logs?"
"We'll take the risk," said another, lighting a pile of wood in the open
fireplace.
"Polly, put the kettle on and we'll all have tea," commanded Edward,
pointing to a tray on a wicker table on which were tea things ready for
use.
The young man answering to the name of "Polly" obediently started the
flame on the alcohol lamp, and another student, growing bolder still,
penetrated the kitchen premises of the villa and returned with a handful
of cups and saucers.
"Might as well be killed for a sheep as a lamb," observed Edward. "Did
you find any bread and butter in the larder?"
"No; tea biscuit,--a tin full," cried "Polly," depositing a tin box on
the table.
All this time Nancy Brown, enthroned in the largest and most comfortable
chair in the room, was being waited on like a small queen.
Her curls had curled closer from the dampness; her little feet on the
brass fender were drying comfortably and the uneasy thought of how she
was to explain things to Miss Helen Campbell was stowed away somewhere
in the back of her mind.
"Here's to our host, whoever he is," exclaimed Edward, raising his cup
of tea and then putting it to his lips. "Whoever he is, may he be
granted peace and prosperity for his unconscious hospitality."
"And how do we know it's a man?" demanded Nancy.
"Because there's not a trace of femininity in the whole room," said
Edward. "There are pipes and tobacco jars and a box of cigars. Here are
some scientific magazines and books,--do you think any woman would read
those?"
"There's a boy here," put in another student, holding up a rubber ball
in one hand and a book of fairy tales in the other.
"Wouldn't a girl play with a ball and read fairy tales?" asked Nancy,
feeling that she must stand up for the rights of her sex even in the
matter of games and books.
"Oh, of course. But she wouldn't play with lead soldiers, would she?"
asked Bixby, displaying a small toy soldier he had found on the floor.
"Marvelous! Marvelous!" said Bulger. "And now, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, what
other facts do you gather from this slight evidence?"
"I should say, my dear Watson," answered Bixby, pulling a cap over his
eyes and folding his arms, "that the owner of the villa was of small
stature. I judge that from the size of his foot." He held up a man's
bedroom slipper that he had drawn from under Nancy's chair. It was
indeed hardly larger than a boy's slipper. "He is a widower with one
son. He lives abroad most of the time and comes to Oxford in the spring
because he loves nature; so much so that he goes out walking and forgets
to notice what the weather is. He is a man of studious habits because he
has a student's lamp and slippers ready for comfort the instant night
drops her sable curtain. He is a small, amiable character, hospitable,
as we can testify, with refreshment ready for all chance guests from one
to eight or nine. He is agreeable----"
"How do you know that?"
"His house--his house, my dear Watson. Can't you see that only a person
of an amiable, trusting nature would go out and leave every door and
window stretched wide? We will picture to ourselves, then, the
hospitable owner of this villa as a small, dapper, wholesome gentleman
with an amiable heart and a gentle nature----"
A heavy step was heard in the hall; a shadow darkened the doorway and a
shrill strident voice exclaimed:
"Well, I never!"
Instantly nine pairs of eyes were focused in the same direction. There
were nine simultaneous exclamations of one sort or another. Polly
stifled a laugh. Nancy cried "Oh!" Edward Bacon was heard to say in a
deep basso: "Caesar's ghost!"
There entered the room a female person of tremendous size and
proportions. Only one woman in the world could be as huge as that. Nancy
looked at her face closely and shrank back in her chair. It was Felicia
Rivers.
She was dripping wet. Streams of water ran down her ample sides and she
shook herself like a sea lion, scattering the moisture about her in
every direction.
"You are the Master's friends, young gentlemen, I suppose?" she
observed.
"We hope so," answered Edward Bacon, somewhat doubtfully.
"And where is the master?"
"Held up by the shower, I suppose. We came in and helped ourselves, you
see. We were in the worst of it, and this young lady was so cold."
If Felicia Rivers recalled Nancy, she made no sign of any recognition.
Indeed, she only gave the young girl a passing glance.
"I am the new housekeeper," she announced.
"Have a cup of tea?" suggested Edward.
"It would be most grateful, young gentlemen. I'm that wet and tired. I
hope I may never take another railway journey. London's the place for
me, gentlemen. I ain't the one to make excursions to the country. I'm a
very 'ospitable person an' I likes my own home, an' a very nice 'ome it
is, young sirs; Jetson Terrace--large, light an' airy rooms; good
service and candles prowided."
Nancy stifled a laugh when she recalled Miss Felicia Rivers' lodging
house. She seemed to see the great creature again sitting before the
kitchen fire eating sausages and buttered toast while she murmured:
"Large, light and airy rooms; good service; candles prowided."
Miss Rivers sat down and sipped her tea comfortably.
One of the students glanced uneasily out of the window.
"The rain is over. We had better be going," he said.
"Will you thank your master for us, please, and tell him we enjoyed his
hospitality and the shelter of his home in the storm?" Edward remarked
politely to the housekeeper.
"Since you are such friends of the masters, young sirs," said Miss
Rivers, "you must be on the right side." She paused and looked at them
inquiringly.
"We trust so," replied Edward.
"Maybe, then, you'd take interest in the bit of news I've brought with
me down from London," continued the woman, a crafty look in her small
fishy eyes that Nancy seemed to remember as if she had seen it only
yesterday.
"We would, of course," said Edward.
"Then, come close to me and I'll tell ye," whispered the loquacious
being, who, it was plain, was bursting with her news. "Tweedledum is in
a great rage and no mistakes, and he's going to Ireland."
Only Nancy did not smile at this piece of interesting information.
"Indeed," said Edward Bacon, "how very interesting. We must be going.
Don't disturb yourself, Madam, we'll just leave the way we came in, by
the open front door. Good day."
They hastened from the villa just as the last rays of the setting sun
gleamed through a bank of clouds.
"Mad as a March hare," Nancy heard one of the students say.
"She has fatty degeneration of the brain, I suppose," said another.
Then they all laughed.
"It was a jolly good joke on us, just the same, to excite our curiosity
and tell us that Tweedledum had gone to Ireland! By Jove, but that's a
thrilling bit of news," exclaimed Edward Bacon.
They turned over the boat to drain it out, and once more embarked on the
little river.
Nancy had gradually become very weary of her eight cavaliers. She
yearned infinitely to be back with Miss Campbell and her friends. With
sad and tearful eyes she gazed on the ruins of her pink hat.
"I've been wicked,--I've been wicked! Will they ever forgive me?" she
thought, while two hot tears rolled down her cheeks and fell on the
rumpled folds of her damp dress.
"Don't cry," whispered the student sitting beside her in the stern of
the boat. "There are lots of hat stores in Oxford. Can't it be furbished
up a bit?" He pointed to the crushed mass of pink.
"It isn't the hat,--at least not entirely," sobbed Nancy. "It's because
I went off like this without leaving word and with so many strange
b-boys."
"But we aren't altogether strange, you see, because several of us know
Peppercorn and the Paxtons," the young man assured her.
As the boat skimmed over the waters back toward Oxford and Nancy saw the
towers of St. Magdalen's glistening in the sunshine, she began to feel
more and more uncomfortable and wretched. Perhaps Miss Campbell would
send her back to America with a note to her mother and father that she
could not be responsible for a girl like Nancy. She would lose her three
friends, Billie and Elinor and Mary. She would not visit the castle in
Ireland, nor see Maria again, and then--there was her best
hat,--ruined--utterly ruined. She choked down her sobs. She must command
herself before all these strangers. Dipping her handkerchief into the
water, she dabbled her eyes pathetically.
"I'm afraid you'll think American girls are dreadful cry babies," she
said, "but, you see, I know I've done wrong and I can't think of any
explanation or excuse."
The eight young men were deeply sympathetic. Nancy weeping was quite as
fascinating to them as Nancy smiling and demure.
"Never regret the past. Think only of the future," observed a
cadaverous-looking student regarding Nancy through the double lenses of
a pair of large spectacles like a quizzical owl.
Nancy gazed at him doubtfully.
"I'm trying to think of the future," she answered. "That's why I'm
unhappy."
"Could any one have the heart to scold you?" asked the spectacled
student.
She did not reply, but her heart remained decidedly unquiet and
troubled, and she desired earnestly to make the confession and take the
medicine, whatever it was to be. At least she would have something
interesting to tell them: Felicia Rivers and that queer thing about
Tweedledum.
However, like half the world, Nancy was very apt to magnify her
troubles. Nothing could exceed her misery when she hastened up High
Street half an hour later with her escort of eight. At the hotel she
found that her friends had not returned. Why should she have imagined
that she was the only person who had been caught in the rain that
afternoon? After eight friendly handshakes and a sad little smile for
eight at once, she hurried to her room. Now that they had not missed
her, it would be much easier to confess her sins. At last they burst
into the apartment as bedraggled and damp as she herself had been, but
bearing a bit of information which the newsboys had been calling out for
some time in the street below, although Nancy had been too occupied to
notice what they were saying.
"Nancy, what do you think has happened?" cried Billie, rushing to her
friend, without so much as inquiring about the two exciting hours which
had intervened between this and their last meeting. "Little Arthur, the
Duke of Kilkenty's youngest son--do you remember, Nancy--our little
Arthur,--has been kidnapped? Now, what do you think of that for a
thrilling piece of news?"
"But who kidnapped him?" demanded Nancy childishly.
"How under the sun do we know?" answered Billie.
"I suppose the Duke has lots of enemies. He is a very cruel man,"
observed Mary.
"Where's Feargus?" asked Nancy suddenly.
"He's below. We saw him as we came in, reading the paper. But where have
you been, you naughty Nancy-Bell?"
Nancy slipped her arms around Miss Campbell's neck.
"Will you promise not to scold me if I tell you beforehand that I'm
sorry if I've been wicked, and I'll never, never do such a thing again?"
she asked in her most beguiling tones.
Miss Campbell was not proof against such coaxing as this.
"Of course, you sweet child," she answered. "And I believe you are
genuinely sorry. I see you've been weeping."
Then Nancy related the adventures of the afternoon.
"You see they knew the two Paxtons and Timothy Peppercorn and they were
Oxford students and so nice----"
"Eight of them at once?" exclaimed her friends.
Nancy nodded and blushed.
"Why, you must have looked like Queen Elizabeth sailing down the Thames
in her royal barge with all her courtiers," laughed Mary Price.
"But the most interesting part is yet to come," continued Nancy. She had
saved the tid-bit of Felicia Rivers and Tweedledum till the last. "Isn't
it the queerest thing?" she said when she had finished.
"It might be, or it might not be, just as it happens," answered Miss
Campbell. "Felicia Rivers may have obtained a position as housekeeper.
They do say that most of the lodging-house keepers in London were
formerly housekeepers. But I wonder at any one's engaging a great
creature like that to look after his house."
"And you won't write home to mother and father that I have been
naughty?" asked Nancy, embracing Miss Campbell.
"No, child, I won't even scold this time. I strongly suspect that the
ruin of your best hat was punishment enough."
That night the Motor Maids had a serenade. A chorus of eight robust
voices sang beneath their windows to an accompaniment of banjos and
guitars. It began with "Nancy Lee" and the chorus of "Yo-ho-ho's" nearly
rocked the old building on its ancient foundations; and it ended with
"The Moon Is Rising Slow, My Love," sung with so much feeling and such
wistful cadences that the four young girls kneeling at the windows,
wrapped in shawls and dressing-gowns, shook with suppressed laughter.
One of them blushed at the disquieting thought that eight hearts could
be beating for her own self in unison.
The next morning Miss Campbell and the Motor Maids achieved a triumphal
departure from the ancient city of learning. Eleven students of the
Universities of Oxford gathered in front of the hotel and waved them a
last farewell.