MR. GORDON AGAIN
Once that summer Nancy plucked up courage to go in to Cincinnati from Jennie’s home, and called upon Mr. Gordon. She did not tell him to expect her, but bearded the lion as she had once before.
Jennie went with her, of course; only she remained waiting in a tea-room near the big office building where the lion had his lair. Even Scorch was amazed to see Nancy Nelson, dressed in her best and outwardly composed, walk into the outer office of Ambrose, Necker & Boles.
“Such a shock!” gasped Scorch, pretending to faint away in his chair beside the gate in the railing. “And, say! Miss Nancy, how tall you’re getting!”
“So are you, Scorch,” she told him, holding out her hand.
“And good-looking—My eye!”
“Your hair is a whole shade darker, Scorch.”
“You couldn’t say nothing handsomer, Miss—not if you tried for a week,” declared the office boy, shaking hands vigorously. “What’s turned up? Are you going to crack the whip over Old Gordon?”
“How you talk, Scorch! You mustn’t be so disrespectful. And why should I crack any whip over Mr. Gordon?”
“You will when you get the best of him—eh?”
“I certainly shall not. He—he’s been very kind to me, as far as I know.”
“Go in and see if he’s kind now,” grinned the red-haired one.
“Oh, no, Scorch! You announce me.”
“Yah! you’re too easy on him,” growled Scorch, and went off to do as he was bid. When he came back he didn’t look very pleasant.
“He says you can come in,” snapped Scorch.
“What’s the matter?” asked Nancy, a little fearfully.
“He acts like a bear with a sore head trying to open a honey tree. He’ll eat you alive, Miss Nancy.”
“All right. The banquet might as well begin right now,” returned the girl, bound not to show how shaky she really was.
So she walked directly to Mr. Gordon’s door, knocked lightly, and without waiting for any encouragement, walked in upon the big man in the armchair before the flat table.
Again he was silent, but Nancy knew that he was looking at her in the mirror. Nancy was very glad, for a moment, that she was looking her best. She flushed a little, took another step forward, and said:
“How do you do, Mr. Gordon?”
“What do you want now?” demanded the lawyer, ungraciously.
“I want you to see me and tell me if you are satisfied with my progress, sir,” she said, boldly, as she had intended.
“Humph! I receive reports from the woman who runs that school.”
“But you don’t know how I look—how much I’ve grown.”
“Come around here, then, and let’s look at you,” he growled, although he had been staring at her, she knew, since the moment she entered the office.
His big face was quite as expressionless as it had been nearly two years before when she first remembered having seen it. If the little eyes showed any expression when she first entered it was now hidden.
“You look like a well-grown girl—for your age,” he said, with some hesitation. “What do you want?”
“To know if you can tell me anything more about myself—or my people—or what is to become of me when my schooling is done?”
“I can tell you nothing,” he replied, his brows drawing together.
“I have learned typewriting, and I am excellent in spelling, and Miss Meader is teaching me stenography,” she said, simply. “If—if the money should—should stop coming any time, I thought I would better know how to go about supporting myself.”
“Ha!” He stared at her then with some emotion which sent a quick wave of color into his unhealthy cheek.
“What’s that for?” he demanded, at last.
“What is what for, sir?”
“Your getting ready to earn your livelihood?”
“You say you do not know anything about the source of my income. It may stop any time.”
“Well?”
“Then wouldn’t it be necessary for me to go to work?”
“You wouldn’t want to take money from me, then?” he snapped.
“Why, I—I—You say you’re not even my guardian. I’ve no reason to expect anything from you if the money stops coming. Isn’t that so?”
“Independent—eh?” he said, with a brief chuckle.
“I hope to be able to get along when I have to.”
“When you have to?”
“If I have to, then,” she said, nodding.
“Well! Maybe you’re right. No knowing what might happen,” he said, as though ruminating. “Say! Anybody ever talk to you about this money I have to spend on you?”
“No-o, sir. Only my chum and I talk about it,” said Nancy, slowly.
“Curious, I suppose?”
“Yes, sir,” replied Nancy, slowly. “And yet, it is more than curiosity. Suppose my—mother was alive—or, my father——”
“Ha!”
Mr. Gordon passed a big hand over his big face. He smoothed out something there—either a wry smile or a spasm of pain.
“Suppose, instead, you had a bad-tempered step-mother, or a drunken brute of an uncle, or a miser of a grandfather, or some other evilly-conditioned relative. Wouldn’t you rather be as you are than to know such relatives?”
He looked at her sharply.
“We-ell—yes—perhaps——”
“Ha! you don’t know how well off you are,” grunted Mr. Gordon. “Well! I’m busy. What more do you want?”
“No—nothing, sir,” said Nancy, disappointedly.
“Want some more money for your vacation? Those Bruce people must be very fond of you to keep you so long for nothing.”
“They are very kind.”
“There is money here for you if you want it,” said the lawyer, carelessly. “You want nothing?”
“I—I’d like to see Miss Trigg again. She was kind to me—in her way.”
“Who is Miss Trigg?” he demanded.
Nancy explained. He reached into his pocket, selected some bills, and gave her more money than she had ever had at one time before.
“Go on back there to Malden and see your old teacher, if you like. Take the Bruce girl with you. Now, good-bye. I’m busy.”
He was just as brusk and as brief of speech as he had been before. Nancy went away, again deeply disappointed. But she and Jennie went to Malden that week and visited Miss Trigg at Higbee School. Miss Prentice was with a party visiting the Yosemite; but poor Miss Trigg never got away from the Endowment.
The good, wooden, middle-aged woman was really glad to see the girl who had spent so many tedious summer vacations in her care. She tried to be tender and affectionate to Nancy; but the poor lady didn’t know how.
The girls had a nice time about Malden, however. Nancy took her chum to the millpond, where the water-lilies grew, and showed her where Bob Endress had come so near being drowned in the millrace.
Jennie grew very romantic over this place.
“Just think, Nance! Suppose, years and years from now, after you’ve finished at college, and Bob Endress has got through college, too, you should come here to see Miss Trigg, and he should come here, too, and you should meet right here walking in this path.
“Wouldn’t that be just like a storybook?”
“Nonsense, Jen!” exclaimed Nancy, laughing.
But sometimes, after all, the story books are like real life. And if Nancy had had fairy glasses that she might look ahead the “years and years” Jennie had spoken of, how amazed she would have been to see two figures—identical with her own and Bob’s—walking here in the twilight!
But girls of the age of Nancy Nelson and Jennie Bruce are usually much too hearty of appetite, and wholesome of being, to be romantic—for long at a time, anyway.
The chums were as wild as hares that summer. They ran free in the woods, and went fishing with Jennie’s brothers, and “camped out” over night on the edge of the pond, and learned all manner of trick swimming, including the removal of some of their outer clothing in the water.
“We’re not going to be caught again as we were there in Clinton River, when our boat sank,” declared Nancy, and Jennie agreed.
When they went back to Pinewood Hall they were as brown as Indians, and as strong and wiry as wolves. Miss Etching complimented them on the good the summer seemed to have done them.
Now came the time when Nancy Nelson and her chum “went higher” in more ways than one. They were full-fledged juniors, and they had to give up old Number 30, West Side, which they both loved, to incoming freshies.
They drew Number 83—a lovely room, much larger than their old one and more sumptuously furnished. It had a double door, too, and the walls were almost sound-proof.
“What a lovely room to study in!” cried Nancy.
“And a great one to hold ‘orgies’ in,” whispered Jennie, her eyes twinkling.
So they determined, a week after school opened, to have “a house-warming.” Nancy had a good part of her spending money, given to her by Mr. Gordon during vacation, left in her purse. They invited twenty of their closest friends of the junior class and, as Jennie expressed it, “just laid themselves out” for a fine spread.
There was to be fudge, too, which Nancy had the knack of making. The chums had a chafing dish hidden away, and this was brought forth and the ingredients made ready, while Nancy hovered over the dish like a gray-robed witch.
“Do you know what Cora Rathmore said?” chattered one of the visitors.
“Everything but her prayers!” declared Jennie, with sarcasm.
“No, no! about this racket to-night.”
“Didn’t know she knew we were going to have a house-warming,” said Jennie, looking up quickly. “I hope not!”
“She does know,” said another girl.
“Then somebody must have told,” declared Nancy, warmly. “We tried to keep it very quiet.”
“And from Cora, too!” said Jennie, shaking her head.
“Well! she said you were just too mean for anything when you did not ask her—and she right on this corridor,” said the first speaker.
“Well, wouldn’t that jar you?” commented Jennie Bruce.
“And she said she hoped you’d get caught,” pursued the other girl.
“Wow, wow, says the fox!” exclaimed Jennie. “What do you think of that, now, Nance?”
“I think if we are caught we’ll know whom to blame it to,” responded her chum, decidedly.
“My goodness me! Do you suppose she would be so mean?” cried another of the visiting juniors.
“There’s nothing too mean for Cora to try,” answered Jennie.
“And I saw her outside her room just as I came in here!” exclaimed another girl.
“Oh, me, oh, my!” cried Jennie. “I’ve got to go and see to this.”
She dashed out of the room, leaving the other girls in a delightful tremor. She was gone but a moment.
“Oh, girls! Scatter!” she gasped, when she stuck her head in at the door again. “Cora’s out of her room and there’s somebody coming up the lower flight.”
“The Madame herself!” gasped Nancy.
The other girls grabbed handfuls of the good things, and ran. The fudge was not quite done.
“Quick! Out of the window with it!” gasped Jennie, seizing the handle of the pan.
“But she’ll smell it!” wailed Nancy.
“Will she? Not much!” declared Jennie, and grabbing a rubber shoe from the closet held it for thirty seconds over the flame of the alcohol lamp.
Nancy, meanwhile, had been hiding away all the goodies. The candy, pan and all, had gone out of the window. Nothing but the awful stench of the rubber shoe could be smelled when the lights went out, and the girls hopped lightly into bed.
“Rat, tat, tat!” on the door.
Jennie yawned, rolled over, and yawned again.
“Rat, tat, tat!”
“Oh, yes’m!” cried Jennie, bouncing up.
“Nancy Nelson! Nancy Nelson’s wanted!” exclaimed the sleepy voice of Madame Schakael’s maid, who slept downstairs.
“Oh, dear, me! What’s happened?” demanded Nancy, unable to carry out the farce now. This was not what the girls had expected.
“Wanted down in the office, Miss. Telegram. The Madame wants to see you right away.”
The maid went away.
“What do you suppose has happened?” demanded Nancy of her chum.
“It isn’t anything about fudge,” groaned Jennie. “I’m sorry I told you to throw the fudge out of the window. And I’ve spoiled a perfectly good rubber!”
“I must run down. Come with me, Jen!”
“All right,” agreed her chum, and together the two girls in their flannel robes scuttled out of Number 83 and down the two flights to the lower hall.
There was a light in the principal’s office. When Nancy and Jennie went in Madame Schakael was sitting at her broad desk. It was not yet midnight.
“I was sorry to break up your party, Nancy,” said the little lady, with a quiet smile. “But it seemed necessary.”
“Oh, Madame! did you know——”
“I was kindly told by one of your classmates,” said the Madame, grave again. “I am sorry it so happened. I do not encourage meannesses of any kind at Pinewood Hall. The tattler is one of the most abominable of our trials.
“As for the breaking of the rules by girls who wish to stuff themselves with goodies after hours, I have little to say. A junior who is president of her class, and on the road to being one of our most prominent pupils, knows best what she wishes to do.”
“Oh, Madame! Forgive me!” begged Nancy, greatly troubled. And even Jennie saw nothing humorous in the incident.
“You are forgiven, Miss Nelson,” said Madame Schakael, cheerfully. “I expect, however, my junior and senior girls to help rather than hinder the general deportment of the school. And ‘orgies’ after hours do not set the younger girls a good example.
“However,” said the principal, kindly, “this was not my object in calling you down, as I said before. A telegram has arrived for you. I do not understand it, but perhaps you will. Here is the evening paper—it in part solves the mystery. But who, my dear, signs himself or herself ‘Scorch’?”
“Scorch!” gasped both Nancy and Jennie together.
The Madame pushed the yellow slip of paper toward the startled Nancy. She read at a glance what it contained:
“Come to Garvan’s Hotel at once. G. in bad way. See P. & O. accident.—Scorch.”
“Scorch is Mr. Gordon’s office boy,” said Nancy, trembling.
“And ‘G.’ stands for Mr. Gordon,” whispered Jennie, looking over her chum’s shoulder.
The Madame had rustled open the paper and now displayed the front page to the eyes of the girls. Spread upon it was the account of a terrible accident on the P. & O. Railroad. At the top of the list of injured, printed in black type, was:
“Henry Gordon, lawyer, Cincinnati, seriously.”