“Oh, yes, of course——” stammered the student, trying to be polite. “It was awfully good of you to come, don’t you know——” he broke off and cleared his throat.
“Then, where is Timothy?”
“Timothy?”
“Yes, Timothy Peppercorn and the others? I was to come right here and have tea with them after I left the hotel. This was the house, I’m sure. And where are the two Edward Paxtons and Miss Campbell?”
Nancy Brown was assuredly a most bewildering mixture of child and woman. She must have known that she had come to the wrong house and that the only thing for her to do was quickly to descend those uncarpeted stairs and return to the hotel, or search again for the lodgings of Timothy and the Paxtons. But the sight of the eight bashful students, desperately shy, and still unable to lift their gaze from her charming face, inspired her with the spirit of mischief.
“I’m a little frightened,” she said suddenly looking about the room, as if she had only just noticed it was filled with people. “I—I’m lost,” she added with a choke in her voice.
This was not the first time that Nancy had practiced the rôle of coquette, young as she was.
“Oh, don’t be frightened,” exclaimed the spokesman for the eight, forgetting to be shy in the presence of this alarmed beauty. “No one is ever really lost in Oxford. It isn’t big enough.”
“But I am,” insisted Nancy. “It’s dreadful to be lost in a strange country. It’s so lonely.”
There was actually a suspicion of a sob in her voice when she made this statement.