“Jolly afternoon for boating,” remarked the handsome Edward, pointing to the pretty river below dotted with small craft. “Wouldn’t it be good sport, Miss Brown, to bring Peppercorn and your friends along for a row before supper? Would they like it, do you suppose?”
“Like it? They would love it,” cried Nancy. “That is what they expected to do anyway. Do hurry.”
It took some time, however, to find Timothy’s address and then locate his lodgings, which were indeed very much like those Nancy had mistaken for his. A neat-looking woman answered the bell this time, and curtseyed with an old-world politeness.
“Please, Miss, are you Miss Nancy Brown?” asked the woman respectfully.
“The lady says as how they couldn’t wait for you any longer. You wuz to follow with the young man down High Street to Carfax Tower; then to Oxford Castle and His Majesty’s Prison.”
Nancy felt rather hurt. But of course she had no means of knowing that Billie and Edward had gone back to the hotel to find her before they had proceeded on their way to Carfax Tower and Oxford Castle. It was much too beautiful an afternoon to waste indoors, and not being especially uneasy about Nancy, remembering that she was with Feargus, they had concluded that she could not possibly miss the way, and so departed with easy consciences.
“I say, you know, that’s jolly mean of them to leave you in the lurch like that, Miss Brown,” exclaimed one of the cavaliers. “Oxford Tower is way over on the other side of town. We could get in a little row before they finished looking at it. What do you say?”
Nancy hesitated; drooped her lashes; looked serious a moment, and then smiled.
“I believe I’ll risk it,” she said. “It would be fun and I don’t feel a bit like taking that long walk. I have already walked miles, I believe.”
We will admit that it was naughty of Nancy to do this reckless thing,—rowing off in a college barge with eight strange young men. But she did not intend to be naughty. She only wanted to enjoy herself under the drooping pink brim of her pretty hat. And after all, it isn’t every girl who has eight handsome cavaliers to row her on one of the loveliest rivers in all England. Once in the long boat with her small feet on somebody’s coat to keep them dry, one young man holding the white silk parasol and another the hand bag, and all of them entertaining her at once, Nancy quite forgot that she was engaged in an unconventional adventure. It did not seem to occur to the bashful students, either, so bewildered were they by this charming young American who was modest and demure and still not shy. They had not met a girl like her before.