Nan, however, answered no. “I am sure I cannot do it, Gracie,” she said, over and over again. “I have to meet my father and mother when they come back from Scotland, and go home to Tillbury with them. And—and my school days are quite, quite ended. I shall have to begin to think of more serious things.”
She would give Walter no more satisfaction, either. Even when Mrs. Mason wrote a personal note to Nan, repeating the invitation, the girl could only write in return that she saw no possibility of circumstances allowing her to be with her friends in Chicago during the holidays.
This only goes to show how little we really know in this world of what is to happen to us, even in the immediate future; for if the reader cares to learn what actually happened to Nan and her friends that very vacation at the Mason city home, she need only read the next volume of this series, entitled: “Nan Sherwood’s Winter Holidays; Or, Rescuing the Runaways.”
How such a change came about in Nan’s plans and circumstances, was a great surprise, indeed.
The end of the term was in sight. Nan had caught up in her missed studies and her standing was very satisfactory, indeed. Dr. Prescott had praised her for her record.
“I shall be as sorry to lose you, my dear, as any pupil I ever had,” declared the preceptress. “And I still hope that some way may be found to make possible the continuation of your course here at the Hall.”
That had pleased Nan immensely; but she had no hope of the principal’s wish coming true. She tried to keep her record high to the very last day, not even neglecting Professor Krenner’s lectures upon architectural drawing.
Amelia and Nan attended the last of these one afternoon at the professor’s cabin, up the lake shore. They skated up the cove to the strait behind the Isle of Hope. In warm weather the girls sometimes went picnicking to the Isle of Hope. It was a rocky eminence thrust out of the lake, half a mile off the mainland.
Professor Krenner’s cabin was a very cozy place—a single big room, with a fireplace at either end in which the flames now leaped ruddily among the birch sticks, and with a corner cut off with Navajo blankets for a bedroom. One side wall was hung with the professor’s drawings; the one opposite with many cured skins of birds and beasts, for the professor was a taxidermist.
When the work of the architectural drawing class was over, Professor Krenner took his silver bugle down from the wall and went outside with the girls to wake the echoes on the Isle of Hope. He had just lifted the bugle to his lips and sent the first call ringing across the ice: