“Yes, Dr. Prescott,” admitted Nan, almost sobbing.
“Can I help you at all, my dear?”
“No! Oh, thank you, no! Oh! it’s nothing to do with my own self here at school; but it is about my father and my mother. They—they are having some trouble in Scotland.”
“I see, my dear,” said Dr. Prescott, quietly. “I hope it is not as bad as you evidently think. But, whatever it is, remember that I am always ready to help my girls if I can. There may be something later that I can do.”
“Thank you! thank you, so much, Dr. Prescott!” Nan cried, putting up her lips for the warm kiss the preceptress gave her. “And I may speak to Bess?”
“I absolve you from further silence. I think you will remember this punishment,” said the principal, with a smile.
Then Nan went back and told Bess all. The two girls read Mrs. Sherwood’s letter again and again, and Bess declared that Nan should not leave Lakeview Hall, no matter what happened about the Scotch legacy. “My father will pay for you to stay here with me, Nan Sherwood. You know he will.”
Nan would not argue this point. They had talked that over to a conclusion long before circumstances had made it possible for Nan to attend the school. With all her desire for an education, Nan was the soul of independence. She knew now just what she would do. Her parents could not get home much before the Christmas holidays, and Nan determined to go to Tillbury to them when they reached there, and at once get a certificate from Mr. Mangel, the high-school principal, and try to secure a position in some store in Tillbury. She told Bess, to that young lady’s disgust and alarm, that she must help support the family and help her father pay off the mortgage that would have to be put on the little cottage on Amity Street.
“I think it’s just as mean as it can be!” sobbed Bess, fairly given up to woe. “And we were going to have such fun this winter. And Dad’s almost promised that we should have a nice boat next spring. Oh, dear me, Nan Sherwood! Something always is happening to you to stir us all up!”
At another time Nan would have laughed at this way of expressing it; but she found no food for laughter in anything now. The girls who were closest to her, and loved her, were just as tender and kind as their several natures suggested. Grace Mason cried outright and her eyes were swollen and red the next morning when Walter ran over in the motor car to see her.