nearly ten when she tramped upstairs, still on her skates. Judy
called out to her from her room, but Nance had not returned. Molly
unlaced the skating boots, removed the Russian Princess costume, and
flinging her time-worn eiderdown cape around her shoulders, sat down to
toast her toes.

"Judy," she called presently, "what have you done with Nance?"

"The last I saw of the Lady Nance she was going over the hill with her
sandy-haired cavalier."

"I saw her, too, but I haven't met up with her since. I'm afraid she
will get a 'calling' if she isn't back pretty soon."

The girls waited silently. Presently they heard the last of the carnival
revellers return. The clock in the tower struck ten. Mrs. Markham locked
the hall door and put out the hall light, and still no Nance.

"She's gone off skating with Sandy Andy and forgot the time," whispered
Judy, who had crept into Molly's room to confer. "It's a good joke on
proper old Nance. I think she was never known to break a rule before."

"You don't suppose anything could have happened to them, do you?"

"Of course not. But you know how absorbed they do get in conversation.
They wouldn't hear a cannon go off a yard away."

"They are awfully strict here about being out with boys," observed Molly
uneasily. "I do wish she would come home."

The girls lingered over the register talking in whispers until the clock
struck half-past ten.

"Molly, suppose they have eloped!" Judy observed.

"Eloped!" repeated Molly, amazed. Then she began to laugh. "Judy, is
there anybody in the world so romantic as you? Why, they are mere
infants. Andy isn't nineteen yet and Nance was only eighteen last month.
I think we'd better slip out and find them. Come on."

Very quietly the two girls got into their things. They wore their
rubbers this time, and Molly very thankfully carried the imitation
ermine muff. The entire household was sound asleep when out into the
sparkling, glittering world they crept like two conspirators.

"Suppose we try the links first," suggested Judy, "since both of us saw
them disappearing last in that direction."

"If we were really ladylike persons we'd be afraid to go scurrying off
here in the dark," observed Molly.

"I'm not afraid of anything," Judy replied, and Molly knew she spoke the
truth, for Judy was the most fearless girl she had ever known.

When they reached the summit of the hill, they began calling at the tops
of their voices, "Nance! Nance Oldham