LAKEVIEW HALL APPEARS
"Well! I would have boxed her ears, I don't care!" Bess gasped, when Nan
succeeded in pulling her down into her chair. "You ought to have heard
what she said about you----"
"I'm glad I didn't," Nan answered and sighed. "And one good thing--it
broke up that foolish speech-making. I'm so ashamed----"
"Of me!" flared up Bess. "I was only standing up for you."
"Hereafter, dear, do your standing up, sitting down," laughed Nan,
hugging her still overwrought chum.
"Well," pouted the tearful Bess, "I--I don't care!"
"I'll fight my own battles."
"But you never fight!" burst out Bess.
"Isn't that just as well?" Nan observed, rather gravely. "Suppose your
mother heard of your wanting to box a girl's ears in a public place like
this car? And how Professor Krenner looked at you!"
"Oh, I don't care for him," muttered Bess.
"Of course you do. He will be one of our teachers."
"That Riggs girl says that none of the girls at the Hall think much of
Professor Krenner," grumbled Bess. "They say he's cracked."
"I wouldn't repeat what that Riggs girl says," admonished Nan, with some
sharpness. It exasperated her for Bess to show that she had been
influenced at all by the rude rich girl.
"Well, I've found out I don't like her," Bess sighed.
"I discovered I didn't, before," Nan rejoined, dryly.
"But she'll tell awful stories about us at Lakeview Hall," Bess said
with a worried air.
"Let her tell," scoffed the more sensible Nan.
"We--ell! We don't want to begin school with all the girls against us."
"They'll not be. Do you suppose that girl has much influence with the
nice, sensible girls who attend Lakeview Hall?"
"We--ell!" exclaimed Bess, again. "She's rich."
"Bess! I'm astonished at you," declared Nan, with some heat. "Any one to
hear you would think you a money-worshipper. How can you bear to be
friends with me when my folks are poor."
Bess began to laugh at her. "Poor?" she repeated. "And your dear mother
just fallen heir to fifty thousand dollars?"
"Oh--well--I forgot that," returned Nan, meekly. "But I know you loved
me before we had any prospect of having money, Bess. Don't let's toady
to rich girls when we get to this school. Let's pick our friends by some
other standard."
"I guess you're right," agreed her chum. "I've had a lesson. That
hateful thing! But if she does tell stories about us to the other
girls----"
"We can disprove them by Professor Krenner," added Nan. "Don't worry."
"I don't like him," repeated Bess, pouting.
But Nan did. She was quite sure the instructor with the big,
shell-rimmed spectacles, understood girls very well indeed, and that he
would be a good friend and a jolly companion if one would allow him to
be.
There was that about Professor Krenner that reminded her of her own dear
father. They were both given to little, dry jokes; they were both big
men, with large, strong hands; and they were both very observant.
How she would get along with the other instructors at Lakeview Hall, and
with Dr. Beulah Prescott, herself, Nan did not know; but she felt that
she and Professor Krenner would always be good friends.
Nor was she afraid of what Linda might say about her at the Hall. Nan
Sherwood was deeply hurt by the girl's arrogance and unkindness; but
she had too large a fund of good sense to be disturbed, as Bess was,
over Linda's threatened scandal.
"I don't believe a girl like her really has much influence among other
girls--not the right kind of girls, at any rate," Nan thought. "And Bess
and I don't want to get in with any other kind."
She was just as eager as she could be, however, to get to Lakeview Hall,
and find out what it and the girls were like. Boarding school was an
unknown world to Nan. She felt more confidence now in herself, as the
train bore her toward the wild Huron shore on which the school stood,
than she had when she journeyed up into the Michigan woods with her
Uncle Henry, back in mid-winter.
In that past time she was leaving her dear parents and they were leaving
her. Each revolution of the car wheels were widening the space between
"Momsey" and "Papa Sherwood," and herself. By this time Nan had grown
used to their absence. She missed them keenly--she would do that up to
the very moment that they again rejoined her; but the pain of their
absence was like that of an old wound.
Meanwhile she was determined, was Nan, to render such a report of her
school-life to her parents as would make them proud of her.
Nan was not a particularly brilliant girl in her books. She always stood
well in her classes because she was a conscientious and a faithful
student. Bess, really, was the quicker and cleverer of the two in their
studies.
Nan was very vigorous, and loved play much more heartily than she did
her books. Demerits had not often come her way, however, either in
grammar school or high school. Mr. Mangel, the Tillbury principal, had
felt no hesitancy in viseing Nan's application blank for entrance to the
same grade as Bess Harley at Lakeview Hall. Nan, he knew, would not
disappoint Dr. Beulah Prescott.
This school that she was going to, Nan knew, would be very different
from the public school she had attended heretofore. In the first place,
it was a girls' world; there would be neither association with, nor
competition with, pupils of the other sex.
Nan was not wholly sure that she would like this phase of her new school
life. She liked boys and had always associated with them.
Nan could climb, row, skate, swim, and cut her initials in the bark of a
tree without cutting her fingers.
Her vigorous life in the woods during the past six months had stored up
within her a greater supply of energy than she had ever before
possessed. She had, too, seen men and boys doing really big things in
the woods; she had seen courage displayed; she had partaken of
adventures herself that called upon her reserves of character, as well
as muscle.
Indeed, Nan was quite a different girl in some respects from the timid,
wondering child who had gone away from Tillbury clinging to Uncle
Henry's hand. More than ever she felt the protecting instinct stir
within her when she saw her chum going wrong. She knew she must assume
the burden of looking after Bess Harley in this new world they were
entering.
Two hundred girls to compete with! It looked to be such a lot! Lakeview
Hall was a very popular institution, and although the building was not
originally intended for a school, it answered amply for that purpose--as
Professor Krenner told her. One end of the great structure had never
been completed; for its builder's ideas had been greater than his
resources.
She knew that the castle-like structure standing upon the bluff
overlooking Freeling and the troubled waters of Lake Huron, was much too
vast for a private dwelling, and that as a summer hotel it had years
before signally failed.
Under the executive care of Dr. Beulah Prescott the place had expanded
into a large and well-governed school. Nan looked forward with both hope
and fear to meeting so many other girls all at the same time.
The cost of tuition at Lakeview precluded the presence of many pupils
whose parents were not at least moderately wealthy. In fact, it was a
very exclusive school, or "select" as Linda Riggs had called it during
her brief hour of friendship with Bess Harley. Nan devoutly hoped that
not many of the other girls would be as "select" as Linda Riggs.
Among the two hundred girls, surely not many could be so purse-proud and
arrogant as the railroad magnate's daughter. Nan had not been long
enough removed from poverty to feel that she really was rich, nor was
it, after all, an enormous fortune. Her mother's money was altogether
too new an acquisition to have made much of an impression upon Nan's
mind, save to stir her imagination.
She could, and did, imagine a sublimated "dwelling in amity" on the
little by-street in Tillbury. She looked forward to the time when she
and her parents would be together in their old home; but she could not
imagine their style of living changed to any degree.
The life before Nan in the boarding school, however, she realized would
be different from anything she had ever experienced. Later, as dusk
began to shut down and the switch targets twinkled along the right of
way, she peered ahead eagerly for the first sight of the school.
It appeared. Like an old, gray castle on the Rhine, such as she and Bess
had read about, the sprawling, huge building was outlined against the
sky on which the glories of the sunset were reflected. The little town
in the valley was scarcely discernible save for its twinkling evening
lamps; but the Hall stood out boldly on the headland--a silhouette cut
out of black cardboard, for not a single lamp shone there.