th a smile. "I'm not afraid of boys; they don't bite."

"He's a real nice boy, I believe," said Nancy.

"So they all say."

"And he'd understand, I am sure," continued Nancy. "If he was only
warned what harm his telling might do me----"

"Leave it to me!" cried Jennie. "I'll skate with him to-morrow--if he's
on the ice."

Nancy's life in the school was made far more miserable now by Cora
Rathmore and her friends. All these girls, who had enjoyed the spread
bought with Nancy's money, but who had been punished by the principal,
were determined to look upon Nancy as guilty of "telling on them."

Nor did they give her any chance to answer the charge. Cora would not
even speak to her in their room. If any of the other girls came in, Cora
said:

"Oh, come over to your room. We can't talk here, where there is a
telltale around."

This was said _at_ Nancy; but none of them actually addressed her.
Besides, Cora began to hint that she knew something against Nancy that
she was keeping in reserve.

"Oh, yes! she holds her head up awful proud," Cora observed in Nancy's
hearing. "But you just wait!"

"Wait for what, Cora?" asked one of the girls.

"Wait till I get a letter. I'll know all about Miss Telltale soon."

And after that Nancy's worst fears were realized by the news that Jennie
Bruce brought her. Jennie had managed to see and have a private
interview with Bob Endress.

"And of course, he's managed to do it," grumbled Jennie.

"Done what? Oh! done what?" cried Nancy, clasping her hands.

"Well, Cora wormed something out of him. He told her how you were the
girl who saved him from drowning last summer."

"Then it'll all come out!" groaned Nancy.

"That's according. Cora knows where you lived before you came to
Pinewood to school."

"And she'll write to Malden. I believe she _has_ done so."

"But perhaps whoever she knows there won't know you."

"But they'll learn about Higbee School, and then they can trace me to
it. I know if anybody wrote to Miss Prentice she'd tell all about me.
She'd think it her duty."

"Mean old thing!" declared Jennie.

"Oh, Jennie! it's going to be awful hard," said poor Nancy. "You'd
better not be too friendly with me. The girls are all bound to look down
on me."

"Don't be so foolish! Of course they won't."

But Nancy shook her head. She had been all through the same trouble so
many times before. With every incoming class of new girls at Higbee
School it had been the s