It was the first invitation of the kind Nancy Nelson had ever received, so you can imagine how overjoyed she was. Madame Schakael approved. Then it was necessary to get Mr. Gordon’s permission.
Nancy had thanked Mr. Gordon for the twenty-dollar bill he had sent her, but had not heard personally from him in reply. She had broken an understood rule, too, to write twice to Scorch O’Brien—just little notes thanking him for remembering her.
By the way, the twenty dollars that had been lent to Cora Rathmore to pay for the famous supper in Number 30 when Nancy had been frozen out, had never been returned, either completely, or in part. Cora Rathmore seemed to have forgotten her debt to Nancy when she returned from her holiday at Christmas time.
Corinne suspected that Nancy had not been repaid; but nobody else really knew anything about it—not even Jennie. Nancy would not talk about it when some of the girls became curious.
She had not needed the money for anything. At New Year’s Mr. Gordon had sent her a ten-dollar note, but through Madame Schakael. When she asked him if she could go home with Jennie Bruce over Easter, he sent her at once another twenty dollars and his permission—the latter just as short as it could be written.
Scorch evidently watched the mail basket on Mr. Gordon’s desk with the eye of an eagle. A second letter with the card of the law firm upon it was put into Nancy’s hand almost in the same mail with Mr. Gordon’s letter. Such letters passed through the Madame’s hands without being opened. It was a secret that troubled Nancy sometimes; yet she could not “give Scorch away.” This was Scorch’s letter:
“Dear Miss Nancy:
“I see Old Gordon has risked another perfectly good yellow-back in the mail. He’ll ruin the morals of the mail clerks (I rote that word ‘mail’ wrong before) if he keeps on. Know how I seen the yellow-back in the letter? I punched a hole with a pin in the crease of the envelope at each end. Squeeze the sides of the envelope together a little and then squint through from one hole to the other. That’s an old one.
I want you to know I’m on the job. That Jennie girl you sent to me is some peach; but she ain’t in your class for looks, just the same. Her brother is a pretty good feller, too; but we couldn’t get together on any scheme for jolting what you want to know out of Old Gordon. The time will come, just the same. When it does, I’m little Johnny On-the-Spot—don’t forget that.
So no more at present, from