The only thing that troubled Nancy about this semi-intimacy between herself and the Academy boy was the fact that Grace Montgomery was so angry. She seemed to have an idea that the only person who had any right to speak to her cousin was herself.
Nancy was not so afraid to demand her rights as she once had been. If Grace and Cora scowled at her, and belittled her behind her back, Nancy had learned to go serenely on her way and pay no attention to them.
What if they did say she was a “nobody?” Nancy knew that she was popular enough with her classmates to win the high position of class president twice in succession.
“Let the little dogs howl and snarl,” Jennie said. “What do we care?”
Yet the slur upon her identity could always hurt Nancy Nelson. Many a night, after Jennie was sound asleep in her bed, Nancy bedewed her pillow with tears.
She reviewed at these times all the important incidents in her short life.
The few brief notes that Mr. Gordon had sent to her she treasured carefully. She could not admire that peculiar gentleman; yet he was the one link that seemed to bind her to her mysterious fortune.
She received characteristic notes from Scorch O’Brien, now and then; they got past the Madame’s desk unopened because they were addressed on the typewriter, and purported to come from the office of Ambrose, Necker & Boles.
So the weeks sped. Spring came and then the budding summer, and again the long line of white-robed girls walked the winding paths of Pinewood Hall. The school year seemed to have fairly flown and Nancy and her mates found themselves facing the fact that they were no longer sophomores, but juniors!
The Montgomery clique “got busy” again and tried to balk the election of Nancy for a third time to the office of president of the class. To be president in junior year was just as good as an appointment to the captaincy of a Side in senior year.