Nan would not argue this point. They had talked that over to a conclusion long before circumstances had made it possible for Nan to attend the school. With all her desire for an education, Nan was the soul of independence. She knew now just what she would do. Her parents could not get home much before the Christmas holidays, and Nan determined to go to Tillbury to them when they reached there, and at once get a certificate from Mr. Mangel, the high-school principal, and try to secure a position in some store in Tillbury. She told Bess, to that young lady's disgust and alarm, that she must help support the family and help her father pay off the mortgage that would have to be put on the little cottage on Amity Street.
"I think it's just as mean as it can be!" sobbed Bess, fairly given up to woe. "And we were going to have such fun this winter. And Dad's almost promised that we should have a nice boat next spring. Oh, dear me, Nan Sherwood! Something always is happening to you to stir us all up!"
At another time Nan would have laughed at this way of expressing it; but she found no food for laughter in anything now. The girls who were closest to her, and loved her, were just as tender and kind as their several natures suggested. Grace Mason cried outright and her eyes were swollen and red the next morning when Walter ran over in the motor car to see her.
"What's the matter, Sis?" he demanded. "Who's been picking on you now?"
"Sh! Nobody. Nan and Bess and Laura wouldn't let them," his sister confessed. "But it's Nan--in _such_ trouble!"
She related what she knew of the circumstances, and Walter was deeply impressed by the story.
"Go ahead and get Nan, and we'll take a little spin," suggested the boy.
While his sister ran to ask permission, and to find Nan, Linda Riggs came along and stopped, as always, to speak to Walter.
"How is it you never take us girls to ride any more, as you used to last term?" asked the rich girl, smiling winningly on Walter.
"I--I don't have much time," stammered the boy, awkwardly. "Tutors, you know, and all that. Awfully busy."
"Yes--you--are!" laughed Cora, who was with her friend. "We see you on the roads, flying by."
"Here we are, Walter!" she cried. "We're all ready."