"Don't you believe it," declared Mary sourly. "They're here at her party and they can't exactly shove her off in her own house, but it will be 'for one night only.' Now you see! They won't want her around now any more than they have before—a rowdyish thing like that."
She had scarcely replaced her bitter expression by one more suited to the time and place when Louie came over to where they were, her face wreathed in smiles, and her arm flung impulsively around Nan's waist.
"O girls!" she cried. "Isn't it nice? Ruth and I have made Nan promise that she'll come skating with us day after to-morrow, and she's going to join the club. Won't it put a feather in our cap to have such a member?"
Mary knit her brows and Grace smiled icily.
"Very nice," they responded coldly.
Nan's eyes flashed, and then suddenly lowered. "Oh! I didn't give a definite promise," she returned quietly, and with unexpected dignity. "I said if Miss Blake would let me. I'm afraid she won't. I hurt my ankle not long ago, and I haven't dared exercise it much since. Probably Miss Blake will think I ought to save it for a while yet."
"But you were out on Saturday," protested Ruth. "I saw you. Your ankle is only an excuse. You skate so easily, it couldn't be a strain."
Grace looked at Mary with a curious expression in her eyes, but neither of them added her voice to the other girls' solicitations, and the little group stood there in what threatened to become a painful silence when Nan felt a light touch on her shoulder, and, turning around, discovered Miss Blake standing at her elbow.
"O Nan!" she said, smiling brightly at the other girls, as if to excuse herself for not including them in her familiarity, "won't you please go and see if you can't entertain that poor young Joe Tracy? I've done my best, but he won't come out of his shell for all I can do, and I think your hearty, breezy way is just what he needs. He looks so forlorn, tucked away 'all alone by himself,' as you would say."
She patted the girl affectionately on the shoulder as she sent her on her way, saying heartily, as she passed out of ear-shot: "I always feel perfectly secure when I can fall back on Nan to help me out with shy, sensitive people. She has such a great, warm heart that it seems to thaw their stiffness right out of them."