“Oh,” thought she, “if they say that of me already, what will they say when they find that I really have no home and no folks?”
CHAPTER X
“WHO IS SHE, ANYWAY?”
The curfew bell sent the younger girls to their rooms a few moments later; but Cora Rathmore went to bed without speaking to her roommate. And Nancy felt too unhappy herself to try to overcome the other girl’s reticence.
The girl from Higbee School had had so many adventures that day that she could not at once go to sleep. She lay awake a long time after Cora’s heavy and regular breathing assured her that her companion in Number 30 was in the land of dreams.
She heard the gong at ten which demanded silence and “lights out” of the girls on the upper dormitory floors. Then a list-slippered teacher went through the corridor. After that she went to sleep.
But her own dreams were not very restful. She was hiding something all night long from some creature that had a hundred eyes!
In the morning, when she awoke, she knew that what she had been trying to hide—what she must hide, indeed—was the knowledge that she was “Miss Nobody” from all these eager, inquisitive, perhaps heartless girls.