wear a torn, soiled dress as to say "him and me" or
"I ain't."

"You're _wonderful_, Aunt Milly," Nancy had declared, after this
innovation in the school. "I never would have thought of it, myself."
She laughed, ruefully. "I'd better study with Nonie, I guess, and
learn to mend, myself."

Nancy had told Aunt Milly, too, of Nonie's pretend-mother. Perhaps
that was why Aunt Milly's voice was very sweet and tender as she and
Nonie talked and played and read together. Nonie liked to wheel the
chair; she began to look forward to bolder excursions beyond the gate
to the village.

B'lindy, in her heart still a little distrustful that "no good could
come from encouragin' them Hopworths," nevertheless found countless
excuses to join the little group under the apple trees, sometimes
bringing some hideous lace crocheting that had been years in the making
but would some day--if B'lindy lived long enough to complete it--cover
a bed. Sometimes she brought a basket of goodies and other times came
empty-handed and just sat idle with a softened look in her old eyes as
they rested on the purple rim of mountains across the water.

"I guess it makes a body work better for restin' a spell," she said,
after one of these intervals.

But with the success of Nancy's new plans were two little clouds--small
at first but growing with each day. One was the realization that very
soon her work for these dear people could go on without her. And
though in one breath she told herself that this was fortunate, because
her stay at Happy House must end with her father's return, in the next
she was swept with a sharp jealousy that, after she had gone, Aunt
Milly and B'lindy and Nonie and Davy would still gather under the apple
tree.

Since the afternoon Peter Hyde had found her with the manuscript she
had not laid eyes upon him!

A sense of hurt at his neglect did not grow less when she learned from
old Jonathan, after one or two questions, that he had gone over to
Plattsburg; rather it gave way to a resentment that Peter, considering
what good chums they had grown to be and the "school" and everything,
should have gone off on any such trip without one word of parting!

"He'll see how well we can get along without him," she had declared to
herself after the third day. After all he probably _was_ hiding
something; this sudden disappearance must have some connection with it.

His comradeship had grown very pleasant, she admitted, but, she t