reply.

"I wager I have, though," continued the young fellow, watching her
closely, and drawing many of his conclusions from the evidence of her
tell-tale face. "And I'd be ashamed, even if I were a girl, to let
myself be worried by a thing like that. Besides, it isn't fair to Lu
and Ruth. You ought to give them a chance to set themselves straight.
You've no right to believe things of them till you've their own word
for it that it's true. Give them a chance, and if they act queer you
can throw them over."

"But I can't ask them," burst out Nan. "It wasn't anything they said.
It was about the way they feel, and if I give them a chance they may
throw me over."

John laughed. "True for you. They may. But anyway, you'd have done
the just thing. Whatever they did to you, you'd have played fair."

Nan thought a moment. Suddenly she turned on her heel and began to
retrace her steps. "I'm going back," she said, stoutly, "to find Lu
and Ruth! and--and--give them that chance."

"There! Now you're behaving like an honest man," announced John, with
gusto. "One can't afford to be too perpendicular."

But before they had taken a dozen steps they came upon the two girls
themselves, running breathlessly toward them.

"O Nan!" panted Louie. "What is the matter? Are you sick? Are you
hurt? We couldn't find you anywhere!"

"We looked all over and got terribly nervous, and at last Mary Brewster
told us you had gone home," Ruth broke in, gaspingly.

"She said John had taken you, and that you kind of walked as if you
were dizzy or something. We've run all the way! Do say, are you
sick?" pleaded Louie.

"Or hurt?" articulated Ruth.

John and Nan regarded each other solemnly for a moment. Then they both
broke into a peal of laughter. Nan was the first to speak.

"No, I'm not sick and I wasn't hurt--the way you mean. I was a
goose--that's all. I want you to forgive me."

"What for?" demanded the girls, in a breath.

"Why, for--for--making you run after me," replied Nan.

CHAPTER XIV

CHANGES

"Let's go back after luncheon," suggested Ruth as they tramped homeward.

The others assented heartily enough, and Nan was so eager to return to
her sport that she did not wait for Delia to let her in at the upper
door, but burst through the basement way, and ran against Miss Blake in
the lower hall.

"Oh, excuse me!" she panted. "We've had a glorious time. We're going
out again. Please may I have a