word to say.

She skated off by herself. The ringing ice was delightful. Nancy skated
as well as any boy, while she was naturally--being a girl--more graceful
in her motions.

She sped like a dart across the river, came around in a great curve,
like a bird tacking against a stiff breeze, and then started back "on
the roll."

Hands in her jersey pockets, her skates tapping the ice firmly as she
bore her weight first on one, then on the other foot, Nancy seemed
fairly to float over the frozen river.

She saw a group of girls and boys standing about where the Hall boundary
was; but she did not recognize any of them until she was rolling past.
Then she heard Grace Montgomery's shrill voice:

"Oh, she's only showing off. Her name's Nelson. Cora knows all about
her."

"No, I don't," snapped Cora Rathmore's voice. "But she's chummed on me."

Nancy heard no more. She didn't want to. She realized that, after all,
behind her back these girls were speaking just as unkindly of her as
ever.

Suddenly she realized that the group had broken up. At least, one of the
boys had darted out of it and was racing down toward her.

"What's the matter with you, Bob?" she heard Grace call after the boy.

"Say! I know that girl," a cheerful voice declared, and the next moment
the speaker, bending low, and racing like a dart, reached Nancy's side.

"Hold on! Don't you remember me?" he exclaimed.

Nancy looked at him, startled. His plump, rosy, smiling face instantly
reflected an image in her memory.

"I'm Bob Endress," he said. "But if it hadn't been for you I wouldn't
have had any name at all--or anything else in life. Don't you remember?"

It was the boy who had been saved from the millrace that August
afternoon. Of course Nancy couldn't have forgotten him. But she was so
confused she did not know what to say for the moment.

"You haven't forgotten throwing that tire to me?" he cried. "Why! that
was the smartest thing! The chauffeur would never have thought of it.
And Grace and those other girls would have been about as much use as so
many mice. You were as good as a boy, _you_ were. I'd have been
drowned."

"I--I'm glad you weren't," she gasped.

"Then you remember me?"

"Oh, yes. I couldn't forget your face."

"Well!" he cried, "I never did expect to see you around this part of the
country. But I told father I wanted to go back there to Malden next
summer and see if I couldn't come across you. And my mother wrote to a