But with the success of Nancy's new plans were two little clouds—small at first but growing with each day. One was the realization that very soon her work for these dear people could go on without her. And though in one breath she told herself that this was fortunate, because her stay at Happy House must end with her father's return, in the next she was swept with a sharp jealousy that, after she had gone, Aunt Milly and B'lindy and Nonie and Davy would still gather under the apple tree.
Since the afternoon Peter Hyde had found her with the manuscript she had not laid eyes upon him!
A sense of hurt at his neglect did not grow less when she learned from old Jonathan, after one or two questions, that he had gone over to Plattsburg; rather it gave way to a resentment that Peter, considering what good chums they had grown to be and the "school" and everything, should have gone off on any such trip without one word of parting!
"He'll see how well we can get along without him," she had declared to herself after the third day. After all he probably was hiding something; this sudden disappearance must have some connection with it.
His comradeship had grown very pleasant, she admitted, but, she told herself, it belonged to the real Anne Leavitt, like Aunt Milly and Nonie and the others, he must drop out of her life when she left Happy House.
So that he might not even be missed by Davy and his cronies, Nancy devoted one entire afternoon to teaching the boys of the club how to build a fire without matches. When, after repeated and discouraging failures, the last one had joyfully succeeded, Nancy had promised to teach them to wig-wag at the very next meeting.
When Nancy returned to the house, flushed and tired from the hours on the beach, old Jonathan, at the door, presented her with a half-blown rose, its stem thrust through a folded sheet of paper.
"Mr. Peter, over to Judson's, asked me to give it t'you."
With a certain set of the college men and girls Nancy had been very popular; more than once pretty tributes of flowers had come to her. She had accepted them rather indifferently, had kept them with dutiful care in water and had pasted the cards that had come with them in her remembrance book. But this gift was different; it was quaint—and so pretty!
"If you will meet me at seven in the orchard I will tell you a surprise that will tickle you to pieces," Peter Hyde had scrawled across the paper.