Reluctantly they rose, and stood silent for a moment.
“Will you write, Nancy?”
“Yes.”
Poor Jim! He could think of many things which he would like to say, but was too bashful, too repressed to put them into words.
They clasped hands; then Jim ran down the steps, turning to salute when he reached the sidewalk.
Nancy did not feel like joining the others just yet; so she selected a far corner of the nearly deserted writing room and began a letter to her mother. Miss Ashton peered in at her a couple of times, and then went upstairs again without disturbing her.
“Nan is writing,” she said to the other two girls. “I imagine she will be up after a while. I, for one, am going right to bed.”
She was as good as her word; but she lay for several hours, turning over an idea in her mind. When she had settled it to her satisfaction, and not until then, she fell asleep.
In the meantime Jeanette and Martha had also retired, and lay talking across the room.
“It seems to me,” said Martha, “that somebody has quite a case on somebody else.”