THE FRESHMAN ELECTION
The night was cold, but delightful. Nancy Nelson had never felt so sure upon her skates, or so able to keep up her steady stroke for a long distance, as she did now.
The struggle earlier in the evening had seemed to put the right temper into her muscles. Having been relieved by Miss Etching of the two girls—her own classmates—who had attempted to retard her progress, Nancy kept on and on, seeing the distance between herself and the leaders in the race diminishing—by no effort of her own, it seemed—and just enjoying herself.
She skated past Judy Craig, and saw that that eager sophomore was sobbing for breath, and could hardly stand. Nancy felt little weariness and still enjoyed the pace. She had not spurted in the beginning and waited for that wonderful “second wind” that is the help of all long-distance racers, before increasing her first easy pace.
Now she increased her stroke for a second time, and almost at once flashed past two of the older girls. One of them was a senior.
The crowd began to shout for her when Nancy came around the home stake now. Jennie Bruce led the freshmen rooters, and the volume of sound they made showed that there were few “dyed-in-the-wool” Montgomeryites, after all.
Nancy Nelson, the single remaining freshman on the ice, was the hope of the class. Corinne and Carrie and one of the juniors were still struggling far ahead; but the school as a whole soon began to be more deeply interested in the progress of Nancy than in the struggle of the leading girls.
“That little Nelson is making them all look sick,” declared the stout soph, Belle Macdonald. “I hated to see our Judy drop out; but I’d rather see a freshman win over those juniors and seniors, if a sophomore can’t do it.”
“Pah!” exclaimed Cora Rathmore, “Nelson hasn’t a chance with that Canuck. None of us had.”
“Nancy is skating easier than all of them,” observed one of the other girls.
“Wouldn’t it be odd if a freshman should win?” cried Sally.
“It wouldn’t be funny at all if that Nancy Nelson won,” snapped Cora. “That nobody!”
“There’d be no living with her at all, then,” added Grace Montgomery.
“Hurrah for Nance!” shouted Jennie Bruce, when the contestants swung past the home stake again. “She’s going to win!”
The racers began their eighth lap. Not until now had Jennie really believed her own statement—that Nancy had a chance to win. But it actually began to look so.
They came around again. Carrie had dropped far behind Corinne and the junior. Nancy was swinging along, hands clasped behind her back, taking each stroke firmly—rolling just a little, indeed—and seemingly almost as fresh as when she began.
“Bully for you, Nancy Nelson!” many of the freshies cried. “Show ’em what you can do! Don’t give up, Nancy!”
But Nancy had no intention of giving up. She believed she could keep on to the end, and without reducing speed. And on the ninth lap she passed Carrie.
Only two were ahead of her now. As she swung down the home-stretch behind the senior and junior, Nancy’s mates began to shout like mad girls:
“Come on! Come on! Don’t let ’em freeze you out, Nancy Nelson!”
“You’re going to beat, Nance!” cried Jennie Bruce, fairly jumping up and down. “Show ’em what you can do!”
There was only one more lap—one-fifth of a mile. Nancy drew in a long breath as she rounded the stake, and looked ahead. Corinne and her nearest antagonist had spurted a little; but Nancy put her head down, and darted up the course at a speed which equalled what the other girls had done at their best.
It was really wonderful how swiftly the freshman overtook her older rivals. Nancy skated more swiftly than she had in that first dash of the evening.
There was nobody to shut her off now. Cora was not here to foil or trip her. Corinne and the junior played fair.
Before the older girls reached the rounding stake, Nancy flashed past them. The junior spurted, came even with Nancy for a moment at and turn, and then dropped back, to become a bad third in the race. She could never recover after that spurt.
But the French-Canadian girl held on grimly. Slowly she crept up on the freshman. The seniors shouted for their champion; but the rest of the school was calling Nancy home!
“Oh, Nancy! Oh, Nancy! Come on!”
Nancy heard Jennie Bruce’s voice above all the turmoil ahead. Her eyes had begun to water, and the white, badly cut-up ice of the straight course seemed to waver before her.
At her ear she could hear Corinne’s labored breathing. The ring of her rival’s skates rasped upon the younger girl’s nerves, too.
She was under a great strain now. Another full lap would have been more than she could have skated without a breakdown. It was being pressed so close and hard that was wearing Nancy down. She was not used to such contests.
But her roommate’s cracked voice, shouting again and again for her, kept Nancy to the mark. Corinne should not pass her!
She flung herself forward against the wind and worked with teeth that sank into her lip and drew the blood! On—on—on——
She felt something against her hands—against her breast—she was tangled up in it! Something had fouled her, and she had failed, for Corinne swept by at that moment.
And then the girls caught her—Jennie and many of her own class, as well as some of the older girls. They were cheering her, and praising her work—for it was the tape she had run against.
The race was finished and Nancy had won!
Three-quarters of the school were on the ice. Something like three hundred girls can make a lot of noise!
And there was only a tiny group that broke away from the main body and went home in the sulks because Nancy had won the race. Of course this was the Montgomery clique.
“I can tell you right now who won’t be president of our class,” whispered Jennie to Cora Rathmore before the latter got away in Grace Montgomery’s train.
“I suppose you think Nancy Nelson will!” snapped Cora.
It was the first time the idea had come into Jennie’s mind.
It was only three days before the breaking up for the holidays. Everybody was so enthusiastic about Nancy, that Jennie’s work was half done for her.
To see the quietest girl in the school, yet the one who stood highest in her own class, praised and fêted by the seniors, made Nancy’s fellow-classmates consider her of more importance than ever before.
So Jennie’s work was easy. She went among the freshies and whispered—first to one alone, then to two together, then to little groups. And the burden of her tale was always the same:
“The Madame will stand for her—you see! She’s the best little sport there is in the class. She’s scarcely had a mark against her, yet she’s no goody-goody.
“See how she stood for those other girls who treated her so meanly—and never opened her mouth. Why, the Madame could have burned her at the stake and Nance would never have said a word to incriminate that Montgomery crowd.
“And there won’t be a teacher to object. She’s on all their good books. Me? Of course I’ve an axe to grind,” and Jennie laughed. “She’s my roommate, and if she gets the ‘high hat’ I’ll hope to bask in her reflected glory.”
Jennie Bruce was an excellent politician. Had it lain with the girls alone, lively Jennie might have been president of the freshman class herself. But the girls knew that the Madame would never allow it. Jennie’s record for the weeks she had been a student at Pinewood Hall precluded such an honor.
The day before the break-up the members of the freshman class voted for president. Each girl sealed her vote in an envelope and the numbered envelopes were passed into the Madame’s office.
At supper that night, at the time when the school captains marched around the room “to inspect the girls’ hair-ribbons,” as Jennie said, Corinne brought a high, old-fashioned, much dented beaver hat in her hand.
NANCY FLASHED PAST THEM. _Page 215._
That didn’t tell the eager freshmen anything, for both the principal candidates for president of the class had been from the girls rooming on the West Side, and therefore were under Corinne’s jurisdiction.
Grace Montgomery’s friends began to cheer for her. The friends of the other candidates—and there were several—kept still.
“Wait!” advised Jennie, in a stage whisper. “We can afford to yell all the louder a little later—maybe.”
But Corinne tantalized the smaller girls by walking all around the tables the first time without putting the tall hat on any girl’s head. Once or twice she hesitated behind a girl’s chair; but that only made the others laugh, for they knew that those particular girls had had no chance of election anyway.
“Come on!” shouted Cora. “You might as well bring it over here where it belongs,” and she put an arm over the blushing Grace’s shoulders.
But Grace did her blushing for nothing. Corinne crossed the room swiftly, came straight to the corner where Jennie sat, and——
Drew the hat firmly down over Nancy Nelson’s ears!
Nancy could scarcely believe it. She—Miss Nobody from Nowhere—the most popular girl in her class? It was like a dream—only, as she admitted to Jennie, laughing, it was a dreadfully noisy dream!
Corinne could scarcely command silence long enough to read the result of the balloting. Nancy had received nearly one-half of the freshman vote. Grace Montgomery had mustered only eight ballots, while the remainder were scattered among half a dozen other candidates.
The disappointed girls, all but Grace, cheered Nancy, too—and hugged her, and made her march ahead of the class, all around the big dining room, and then into the hall, which was given up to the use of the freshman class for that particular evening.
There the complete organization of the class was arranged, and Nancy presided with pretty dignity, and even Grace Montgomery and her friends had to acknowledge the leadership of the girl whom they had so ill-treated for the past weeks.
Many of the girls went home the next day for the ten days’ vacation. Those who lived at a distance, however, remained at Pinewood. So Nancy was not alone over the short vacation as she wont to be at Higbee School.
Jennie lived not far from Cincinnati, and she couldn’t remain away from home at Christmas.
“I wish you were going with me, you dear old thing!” she said to Nancy, hugging her. “You wait till I tell mother about you! You shall go home with me at Easter—if that Old Gordon will let you; and if you like it at my home we’ll have you part of the long vacation, too.
“And I’m going to get my big brother, John, to take me into the city while I’m home, and I’m going to see Scorch. Just think! Maybe we can find out all about what Mr. Gordon is hiding from you.”
“If he is hiding anything, Jennie,” said Nancy, shaking her head.
And yet, after all the wonderful things that had happened to her of late, Nancy could almost believe that even the mystery of her identity might in time be solved.