ck--to look at their contents.

CHAPTER XII

THE FIRST ADVANCE

Madame Schakael had prophesied that Nancy would be perfect in her
recitations that day, and so there would be no doubt of her being able
to go skating on the river. But with the unexpected letters from Mr.
Gordon's office unopened, it seemed hardly probable that Nancy would
pull through the day without a reprimand.

"What _is_ the matter with you, Miss Nelson?" demanded one of the
teachers sharply, when Nancy had made an unusually brainless answer to a
very simple question.

Nancy came out of her haze with a sharp shock.

"Why--why, Miss Maybrick, I know very much better than that," she
admitted.

"Where is your mind, then, Miss?"

"I--I----"

Nancy was usually frankness personified, and she blurted it out now:

"I'm wondering what is in the two letters I have in my pocket, Miss
Maybrick."

"Where did you get them?" demanded the suspicious teacher.

"Madame Schakael gave them to me. I suppose they are from my guar----"
No! she could not claim Henry Gordon as her guardian. "From the
gentleman who pays my bills here," she added, in a lower voice.

"Well, for mercy's sake go to your seat and read them," said the
instructor, but more mildly. "They may be important. And having mastered
their contents, please try to master the lesson."

Nancy did as she was bid. With trembling fingers she opened one of the
envelopes. They both were typewritten as to address; but one seemed
addressed by an amateur in the art of typewriting. Nancy opened the
other first.

The enclosure was a slip of paper on which was written in a hurried
scrawl:

"You may need something extra. This is for your own use.
--H. Gordon."

And wrapped in this paper was a crisp twenty-dollar bill!

Nancy had scarcely spent a penny of her carefully hoarded pocket money
since coming to Pinewood Hall. Indeed, she had found no opportunity for
using it.

There had been plenty of secret "spreads" and "fudge orgies" in other
rooms. Cora had been to a lot of them, and had always slipped back into
Number 30 without being caught by any prowling teacher.

But of course Nancy had been invited to contribute to none of these, and
she was a particularly healthy girl with a particularly healthy
appetite: so she did not crave "sponge cake and pickles," or other
combinations of forbidden fruits supposed to be the boarding-school
misses'