bookcovers; Nancy
Nelson was too healthy a girl not to desire something of a more exciting
nature than Roman history or higher mathematics on a long, hot summer
afternoon.

That was why she stole away from the deeply absorbed Miss Trigg on one
such occasion late in August, when they had ridden out to Granville Park
to spend an hour or two in the open.

Granville Park bordered a good-sized pond, dammed at its lower end,
where was an old mill site. An automobile road crossed the bridge that
had been built here; but the mill had not been in commission for years.
It was a quiet and picturesque spot.

Just above the millrace was a quiet pool under the bank where great,
fragrant water-lilies floated upon the surface. Those lilies always
attracted Nancy. She wished she were a boy. Boys could do so many things
forbidden to girls!

She longed to strip off her shoes and stockings and wade into the black
water to obtain some of the lilies. She had no idea that, just beyond
the little patch of marine plants, the bottom of the pond fell away
abruptly, and that a current tugged stoutly for the millrace.

On this particular day, when she had left Miss Trigg reading in her
favorite summer-house high on the rocky hill, and Nancy had tripped
lightly down to the path that skirted the pond's steep edge, there was a
boy doing just what she had so wished to do herself.

He was a good-natured looking boy, with plump cheeks and a mass of
light, curly hair that he probably hated, but Nancy thought it made him
look "too cute for anything."

He might have been three years her senior, and was a strong,
healthy-looking youth.

Nancy stopped in the fringe of bushes and watched him. She saw him pluck
several of the long-stemmed beauties, and she wondered, if she showed
herself when he came ashore, he would offer her some.

Then she became aware of several voices in the neighborhood--girls'
voices. They seemed to be calling to the boy, for once he lifted his
shining face and shouted something.

Nancy looked keenly in the direction his eyes took. Through the trees
she saw that an automobile stood on the bridge--or right at its
beginning. The boy belonged to the automobile party. They had spied the
lilies, and he had come down to wade into the pond for them.

Of course he was getting them for the other girls--he would give none to
Nancy.

She could see the chauffeur, in his duster and goggles, standing in the
road, too. But the girls who