toward the hall door. "I told her what
time supper was, and now she will have to suffer the consequences. She
may as well begin at once to learn to be punctual. When she comes down
she may have bread and milk in the kitchen."

"Yes, ma'am." It was well, perhaps, that Miss Polly did not happen to be
looking at Nancy's face just then.

At the earliest possible moment after supper, Nancy crept up the back
stairs and thence to the attic room.

"Bread and milk, indeed!--and when the poor lamb hain't only just cried
herself to sleep," she was muttering fiercely, as she softly pushed open
the door. The next moment she gave a frightened cry. "Where are you?
Where've you gone? Where HAVE you gone?" she panted, looking in the
closet, under the bed, and even in the trunk and down the water pitcher.
Then she flew down-stairs and out to Old Tom in the garden.

"Mr. Tom, Mr. Tom, that blessed child's gone," she wailed. "She's
vanished right up into Heaven where she come from, poor lamb--and me
told ter give her bread and milk in the kitchen--her what's eatin' angel
food this minute, I'll warrant, I'll warrant!"

The old man straightened up.

"Gone? Heaven?" he repeated stupidly, unconsciously sweeping the
brilliant sunset sky with his gaze. He stopped, stared a moment
intently, then turned with a slow grin. "Well, Nancy, it do look like as
if she'd tried ter get as nigh Heaven as she could, and that's a fact,"
he agreed, pointing with a crooked finger to where, sharply outlined
against the reddening sky, a slender, wind-blown figure was poised on
top of a huge rock.

"Well, she ain't goin' ter Heaven that way ter-night--not if I has my
say," declared Nancy, doggedly. "If the mistress asks, tell her I ain't
furgettin' the dishes, but I gone on a stroll," she flung back over her
shoulder, as she sped toward the path that led through the open field.

CHAPTER V. THE GAME

"For the land's sake, Miss Pollyanna, what a scare you did give me,"
panted Nancy, hurrying up to the big rock, down which Pollyanna had just
regretfully slid.

"Scare? Oh, I'm so sorry; but you mustn't, really, ever get scared about
me, Nancy. Father and the Ladies' Aid used to do it, too, till they
found I always came back all right."

"But I didn't even know you'd went," cried Nancy, tucking the little
girl's hand under her arm and hurrying her down the hill. "I didn't see
you go, and nobody didn't. I guess you flew right up through the roof; I
do,