From her window she had an unobstructed view of the top of the flight of steps leading to the shore, as well as the blinking light on the point and the many windows of a lake steamer going past.
Of late the water had grown too cold for swimming, and boating was not so popular as it had been. The keen winds sometimes blew over the lake and into the school cove, foretelling the winter which was steadily approaching from the Canadian side.
Besides, as the term progressed, the school tasks for the girls became more arduous. Dr. Prescott began the year cautiously; but when she once had her girls “into their stride,” as she called it, she pushed them hard. There was less and less time for sport and recreation for those girls who desired to stand well in the monthly reports sent home to parents or guardians.
Girls like Linda Riggs and most of her friends, did not seem to care what their reports were. But Nan felt differently; and even careless Bess had ambition to please the folks at home.
As Nan sat at the window on this evening, however, she wondered if it greatly mattered, after all, what she did—whether she studied, or not. For the letter from Scotland had made the girl very hopeless, indeed. She could not, for this once, at least, feel the uplift of “Momsey’s” hopeful nature. She feared that the fortune which, like a will-o’-the-wisp, had danced before their eyes for so many months, was now about to disappear in a Morass of Despair. The little “dwelling in amity” mortgaged! That seemed to Nan a most terrible thing.
And “Papa Sherwood” and “Momsey” would have to come home, and “Papa Sherwood” would have to take up the search for work again which had so clouded their lives during the first weeks of this very year.
With the outlook on life of a much older person, Nan saw all these approaching difficulties, and they loomed up mountain high in her imagination. After the joy of believing poverty was banished forever from their lives, it seemed to be marching upon them with a more horrid mien than ever.
All the money that could possibly be raised upon the cottage on Amity Street would barely bring her parents home and pay the remainder of her year’s tuition at Lakeview Hall. Nan knew how much the latter would be, and there rose in her heart a determination. It would be impossible to get any of the half year’s tuition money back—that which had been already paid; but her father would not have to pay the remainder of the fee if she left school at the mid-winter holidays.
And this would she do. “Papa Sherwood” should not be troubled by that expense! If she only had not recklessly expended that whole five-pound note for the spread in the haunted boathouse!
Over spilled milk, however, there was little use to cry. Extravagances must stop right here and now.