Suppose my--mother was alive--or, my father----"

"Ha!"

Mr. Gordon passed a big hand over his big face. He smoothed out
something there--either a wry smile or a spasm of pain.

"Suppose, instead, you had a bad-tempered step-mother, or a drunken
brute of an uncle, or a miser of a grandfather, or some other
evilly-conditioned relative. Wouldn't you rather be as you are than to
know such relatives?"

He looked at her sharply.

"We-ell--yes--perhaps----"

"Ha! you don't know how well off you are," grunted Mr. Gordon. "Well!
I'm busy. What more do you want?"

"No--nothing, sir," said Nancy, disappointedly.

"Want some more money for your vacation? Those Bruce people must be very
fond of you to keep you so long for nothing."

"They are very kind."

"There is money here for you if you want it," said the lawyer,
carelessly. "You want nothing?"

"I--I'd like to see Miss Trigg again. She was kind to me--in her way."

"Who is Miss Trigg?" he demanded.

Nancy explained. He reached into his pocket, selected some bills, and
gave her more money than she had ever had at one time before.

"Go on back there to Malden and see your old teacher, if you like. Take
the Bruce girl with you. Now, good-bye. I'm busy."

He was just as brusk and as brief of speech as he had been before. Nancy
went away, again deeply disappointed. But she and Jennie went to Malden
that week and visited Miss Trigg at Higbee School. Miss Prentice was
with a party visiting the Yosemite; but poor Miss Trigg never got away
from the Endowment.

The good, wooden, middle-aged woman was really glad to see the girl who
had spent so many tedious summer vacations in her care. She tried to be
tender and affectionate to Nancy; but the poor lady didn't know how.

The girls had a nice time about Malden, however. Nancy took her chum to
the millpond, where the water-lilies grew, and showed her where Bob
Endress had come so near being drowned in the millrace.

Jennie grew very romantic over this place.

"Just think, Nance! Suppose, years and years from now, after you've
finished at college, and Bob Endress has got through college, too, you
should come here to see Miss Trigg, and he should come here, too, and
you should meet right here walking in this path.

"Wouldn't that be just like a storybook?"

"Nonsense, Jen!" exclaimed Nancy, laughing.

But sometimes, after all, the story books are like real life. And if
Nancy had had fairy glasses that she might l