r herself
and Alma to come back to school for the next term; but that would have
been impossible anyway, Nancy thought, even with Alma cleared of the
dreadful suspicion that rested on her; for Nancy's stiff pride could
not brook the thought of living among people who had doubted her
sister, even though the circumstantial evidence against Alma had been
very strong.

"However shall I get all the money to pay Alma's debt now?" she
thought, dazedly. "I can't get even half of it from Mother, because
she would certainly deny herself the very necessities of life to send
it. I _cannot_ ask Uncle Thomas for it." She knew that in all
probability she could influence Mr. Prescott, through his increasing
affection for her, to help her mother out of their present difficulty,
but the thought of doing so was utterly repugnant to her, and, it
seemed to her, intolerably humiliating both for Mrs. Prescott and Alma.
She was afraid that Mrs. Prescott, learning that Uncle Thomas had shown
a favoritism for her, might urge her to this course, and she could not
decide whether she should swallow her pride for her mother's sake and
for Alma's, or whether she should insist that they fight their way
courageously out of the difficulty. So far as she herself was
concerned, there would have been no question; there was nothing that
she would not endure rather than ask her uncle for a cent.

Her hands were trembling as she folded the letter up, and put it in her
bureau drawer under her handkerchief case.

"How am I going to tell Alma?" Well, she would break the news
to-night. First of all, she must solve the problem of the debt to
Mildred, Only one course was possible. There was her father's ring,
which she always kept, and which was her very dearest, possession. It
was of the heaviest gold, and set with a large seal stone of
lapiz-lazuli. She might raise perhaps thirty-five or forty dollars on
it--which left about seventy still to be found by hook or crook. Never
had any sum appeared so gigantic to Nancy. She could see no other
possible means of getting it than by borrowing it temporarily from
Charlotte, and paying it back by one way or another during the
holidays. She knew that Charlotte would be glad to lend it to her, but
she shrank from the thought of putting their friendship to such a use.
However, there was no help for it. In Alma's pocketbook she found
enough money to pay her way into the city. Her mother would certainly
be sen