“I am sending some money to your Uncle Henry for your use, if any emergency should arise. You must not look for our return, my dear Nancy, too soon. Momsey's health is so much improved by the sea voyage and the wonderfully invigorating air here, that I should be loath to bring her home at once, even if the matter of the legacy were settled. By the way, the sum she will finally receive from Mr. Hugh Blake's estate will be quite as much as the first letter from the lawyer led us to expect. Some of your dearest wishes, my dear, may be realized in time.”
“Oh! I can go to Lakeview Hall with Bess, after all!” cried Nan, aloud, at this point.
Indeed, that possibility quite filled the girl's mind for a while. Nothing else in Papa Sherwood's letter, aside from the good news of Momsey's improved health, so pleased her as this thought. She hastened to write a long letter to Bess Harley, with Lakeview Hall as the text.
Summer seemed to stride out of the forest now, full panoplied. After the frost and snow of her early days at Pine Camp, Nan had not expected such heat. The pools beside the road steamed. The forest was atune from daybreak to midnight with winged denizens, for insect and bird life seemed unquenchable in the Big Woods.
Especially was this true of the tamarack swamp. It was dreadfully hot at noontide on the corduroy road which passed Toby Vanderwiller's little farm; but often Nan Sherwood went that way in the afternoon. Mr. Mangel, the school principal, had written Nan and encouraged her to send a full description of some of Corson Vanderwiller's collection, especially of the wonderful death's-head moth, to a wealthy collector in Chicago. Nan did this at once.
So, one day, a letter came from the man and in it was a check for twenty-five dollars.
“This is a retainer,” the gentleman wrote. “I am much interested in your account of the lame boy's specimens. I want the strangely marked moth in any case, and the check pays for an option on it until I can come and see his specimens personally.”
Nan went that very afternoon to the tamarack swamp to tell the Vanderwillers this news and give Toby the check. She knew poor Corson would be delighted, for now he could purchase the longed-for silk dress for his grandmother.
The day was so hot and the way so long that Nan was glad to sit down when she reached the edge of the sawdust strip, to rest and cool off before attempting this unshaded desert. A cardinal bird—one of the sauciest and most brilliant of his saucy and brilliant race, flitted about her as she sat upon a log.
“You pretty thing!” crooned Nan. “If it were not wicked I'd wish to have you at home in a cage. I wish—”