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The thought had taken root in Nancy's mind at last that she must be somebody of importance. At least, she was an heiress. Whether she owned a single relative, or not, she commanded money. That was something. Of course, the other girls at Higbee had always looked down upon her and considered her "a charity scholar;" but Nancy believed that at Pinewood Hall she could hold up her head with the best.
Then, before Lent, there was the big dance of the year, when the girls of Pinewood Hall and the boys of the Clinton Academy mingled under the shrewd eyes of their respective heads. Dr. Dudley was a solemn, long-faced, stiff-looking old gentleman, with a great mop of sandy hair brushed off his high brow, who never looked really dressed unless he had on a tall hat and a frock coat.
Nancy had never even dreamed that she would be allowed to attend such a select institution. "I do wish you would restrain yourself, Nancy," said the principal. "They will think at Pinewood that you have had no proper training here, at all." "Oh, I beg pardon, Miss Prentice," cried the girl. "I really will try to be a credit to you if I go there."
Yet she was no prig no matter what Grace and Cora said. A rather solemn thought had come to the girl on the night of that day when she had started to run away from Pinewood Hall. Suppose she should, suddenly and without warning, be thrown upon her own resources? Most girls of Nancy's age do not think of such unpleasant things.
Inside the latter, a low and damp abode, there were, on either side of the wooden stairway leading to the loft, but two spacious rooms, flagged with stones, and each containing four or five beds. The girls, who slept together, fell asleep at even, gazing at the fine pictures affixed to the walls, whilst the big clock in its pinewood case gravely struck the hours in the midst of the deep silence.
Now, the crests of Hindhead and Blackdown, purple black against the level gold of the evening sky, might have been some high-flung boundary chain. Nearer there gathered banks and pools of luminous lavender-tinted mist out of which hills of pinewood rose like islands out of the sea. The intervening spaces were magnified to continental dimensions.
Yet she was glad, too, to go back to her studies. "And so would I be, if I had a chance of standing anywhere near you in classes," agreed Jennie. "But I'm always falling down just when I think I'm perfect in a recitation." But there was much more dignity in the bearing of both Nancy and Jennie when they approached Pinewood Hall on this occasion.
"I shouldn't want to try," observed Nancy, quietly. "Well! if you didn't act so offish we girls would like to be friends with you," said Cora, tucking her arm into Nancy's. "Going skating this afternoon?" This was the first time any girl at Pinewood Hall had ever walked in a "chummy" manner with Nancy.
You're a good girl, Janie Bruce, if you do make me a world of trouble." "Trouble! Trouble!" shouted Jennie. "How dare you say such a thing?" and then she danced around the good soul, clapping her hands and singing: "Pease Porridge hot pease porridge cold Pease porridge in the pot, nine days old! Some like it hot some like it cold But Jessie Pease of Pinewood never will be old!"
She reached the unlocked door and had her hand upon the knob. Indeed, she turned the knob and pulled the door toward her. The cold evening air blew in upon her face. It was the Breath of the Wide World that world that lay before her if she left the shelter of Pinewood Hall and the bitterness of her life here. And then, for the first time, a thought struck her.
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