“Good! I hope she will be paid back. But you can’t pay her back for the mean way you have treated her,” declared the senior, with some warmth.
“I don’t want to! I don’t want to!” almost screamed Cora. “Do you think I am going to have anything to do with a girl who doesn’t even know who she is?”
“What do you mean, Cora?” asked Corinne, quickly.
“That girl,” cried Cora, pointing a quivering finger at the silent Nancy, “was just found by somebody when she was a baby and was sent to a charity school—the Higbee Endowment School in Maiden, it’s called.
“She’s a foundling. Her parents deserted her—or they were sent to jail—and other people sent this girl to school. She knows it’s so! She daren’t say it isn’t!” continued the enraged Cora.
“She’s just a little Miss Nobody. If such girls as she, without family or friends, are going to come to Pinewood Hall, I am sure my mother won’t want me to stay here. And one thing I am very sure of,” pursued Cora. “I will not remain in Number 30 with this—this nameless girl that no one knows anything about.”
“Quite so, Miss Rathmore,” observed a quiet voice behind the excited Cora. “What you say is emphatic, at least; and it really seems to be in earnest. Therefore, it shall have my respectful consideration.”
A horrified silence fell upon the group of girls at the foot of the stairs.
“Miss Pevay,” said the Madame, calmly, “bring Nancy Nelson and Cora Rathmore to my office at once. What is that on the floor?”
The little lady pointed to Nancy’s coat and cap. Nancy, with dry lips, told her.