Nancy slipped her arms around Miss Campbell’s neck.
“Will you promise not to scold me if I tell you beforehand that I’m sorry if I’ve been wicked, and I’ll never, never do such a thing again?” she asked in her most beguiling tones.
Miss Campbell was not proof against such coaxing as this.
“Of course, you sweet child,” she answered. “And I believe you are genuinely sorry. I see you’ve been weeping.”
Then Nancy related the adventures of the afternoon.
“You see they knew the two Paxtons and Timothy Peppercorn and they were Oxford students and so nice——”
“Eight of them at once?” exclaimed her friends.
Nancy nodded and blushed.
“Why, you must have looked like Queen Elizabeth sailing down the Thames in her royal barge with all her courtiers,” laughed Mary Price.
“But the most interesting part is yet to come,” continued Nancy. She had saved the tid-bit of Felicia Rivers and Tweedledum till the last. “Isn’t it the queerest thing?” she said when she had finished.