But this day seemed not to be a bad one for Nancy, after all. Cora waited for her, with her skates, after recitations were over, and they joined a party of Cora’s chums on the way to the river.
Grace Montgomery was not among these; Grace never had a word for Nancy, so the younger girl kept away from the senator’s daughter.
But the river was broad, and the ice was like glass, and in the exhilaration of the sport Nancy forgot snubs and back-biting, and all the ill-natured slights under which she had suffered since becoming a dweller in Number 30, West Side, Pinewood Hall.
She noted one thing that afternoon. Few of the girls skated toward the railroad bridge; but most of them to the school bounds in the other direction. The reason for skating down the river instead of up Nancy did not at first understand. Then she heard some of Cora’s friends talking and laughing about it.
“Guess the old doctor has a grouch again. Isn’t that mean? There isn’t a boy in sight.”
“Not one!”
“Isn’t it horrid of him?” cried another.
“I’ll wager the old doctor has a channel sawed through the ice at the bend here before he lets the boys out,” declared a third.
“I did want so to see Bob Endress,” Grace Montgomery complained. “I want him to bring a lot of nice boys home from the Academy at the holidays, so as to have them at my party.”
It struck Nancy that she had heard this Bob Endress spoken of before; but she had no idea that there was any reason why she should be interested in him.