Nan made no reply.
"I wager I have, though," continued the young fellow, watching her closely, and drawing many of his conclusions from the evidence of her tell-tale face. "And I'd be ashamed, even if I were a girl, to let myself be worried by a thing like that. Besides, it isn't fair to Lu and Ruth. You ought to give them a chance to set themselves straight. You've no right to believe things of them till you've their own word for it that it's true. Give them a chance, and if they act queer you can throw them over."
"But I can't ask them," burst out Nan. "It wasn't anything they said. It was about the way they feel, and if I give them a chance they may throw me over."
John laughed. "True for you. They may. But anyway, you'd have done the just thing. Whatever they did to you, you'd have played fair."
Nan thought a moment. Suddenly she turned on her heel and began to retrace her steps. "I'm going back," she said, stoutly, "to find Lu and Ruth! and—and—give them that chance."
"There! Now you're behaving like an honest man," announced John, with gusto. "One can't afford to be too perpendicular."
But before they had taken a dozen steps they came upon the two girls themselves, running breathlessly toward them.
"O Nan!" panted Louie. "What is the matter? Are you sick? Are you hurt? We couldn't find you anywhere!"
"We looked all over and got terribly nervous, and at last Mary Brewster told us you had gone home," Ruth broke in, gaspingly.
"She said John had taken you, and that you kind of walked as if you were dizzy or something. We've run all the way! Do say, are you sick?" pleaded Louie.