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"No, ma'am!" said Bess Harley, shrilly. "We're here ahead of 'em all. We can go first, can't we, Professor Krenner?" "Certainly, my dear," responded the professor. "Look over the sled, Walter, and see that it is all right." The handsome sled was almost new and there could be nothing the matter with it, Walter was sure. Other parties of girls from the Hall, dragging bobsleds, were appearing now.
But no teacher save Professor Krenner was on the brow of the hill when the Sky-rocket was hauled into position again. This time Nan steered, with firmly braced feet, her mittened hands on the wheel-rim, and her bright eyes staring straight down the course. "Are you ready?" cried the professor, almost as eager as the girls themselves.
He is not a rascal." "I say he is!" ejaculated the man with the grouch. Here Professor Krenner interfered, and he spoke quite sharply. "You've said enough, Bulson. Are you hurt?" "I don't know," grumbled the fat man. "He can't tell till he's seen his lawyer," whispered Laura Polk, beginning to giggle. "Are any of you girls hurt?" queried the professor, his red and white cap awry.
"Well, aren't those girls ever going to start?" snapped the tall girl, richly dressed in furs, who had come up with a party of chums and a very handsome "bob." Professor Krenner was quite used to Linda's over-bearing ways, and so were her fellow-pupils. They made the rich and purse-proud girl no more beloved by her mates.
Professor Krenner took the silver bugle from his lips while the strain echoed flatly from the opposite, wooded hill. That hill was the Isle of Hope, a small island of a single eminence lying half a mile off the mainland, and not far north of Freeling. The shore of Lake Huron was sheathed in ice. It was almost Christmas time. Winter had for some weeks held this part of Michigan in an iron grip.
"I should think I'd had trouble enough with people of that name. Is your father Robert Sherwood, of Tillbury, Illinois?" "Yes, sir," replied the wondering Nan. "Ha! I might have known it," snarled the man, trying to beat the snow from his clothes. "I heard he had a girl up here at this school. The rascal!" Professor Krenner had just reached the spot from the top of the hill.
Professor Krenner had general oversight of the coasting on Pendragon Hill, because he lived in a queerly furnished cabin at the foot of it and on the shore of the lake. He marshalled the sleds in line now and took out his watch. "Three minutes apart remember, young ladies," he said. "Are you going with your sister's sled, Walter?" "This first time," said the boy, laughing.
Both Tillbury girls stood well in their classes; and they were liked by all the instructors even by Professor Krenner, who some of the girls declared wickedly was the school's "self-starter, Lakeview Hall being altogether too modern to have a crank." In association with their fellow pupils, Nan and Bess had never any real difficulty, save with Linda Riggs and her clique.
Its course of instruction prepared the girls for college, or gave them a "finish" for entrance upon their social duties, if they did not elect to attend a higher institution of learning. On this occasion Professor Krenner paid no further attention to Linda Riggs. Walter Mason had already taken his place on his sister's sled at the steering wheel in front, with his boots on the footrests.
The first bobsled ran almost to the Isle of Hope before it stopped. By that time Professor Krenner had started the second one, and the impatient Linda was clamoring for what she called her "rights." "We'll show 'em how to speed a bobsled, if you'll give us a chance," she complained. "That thing of the Mason's didn't get to the island. We'll show 'em!"
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