wine the two initials of
the only name she knew into an artistic bowknot! It was because "N. N."
really meant nothing.

For Nancy didn't know whether the name belonged to her or not. She knew
absolutely nothing about her identity--who she was, who her people had
been--of course, it was safe to say she was an orphan--where she had
lived before she came to the Higbee Endowed School when she was a little
tot, who paid her tuition here, or what was to become of her when she
was graduated.

And Nancy Nelson, now approaching the end of her last year at the
school, was more and more persuaded that she should know something about
herself--something more than Miss Prentice, or Miss Trigg could tell
her.

Years before Nancy had listened to the story of her earlier life as it
was whispered into her ear when she and Miss Trigg were alone together,
just as though it was a story about some other little girl.

One September day, just after the fall term had opened, a gentleman
brought a tiny, rosy-cheeked, much beruffled little girl to Miss
Prentice and asked the principal of Higbee School to take charge of the
little one for a term of years--to bring her up, in fact, as far as she
could be brought up and taught at that institution.

This gentleman--who was a lawyer rather well known at that time in
Malden, the small city in which the school was situated--could only say
that the little girl's name was Nancy Nelson, that she had no parents
nor other near relatives, and that he could assure the principal that
the tuition and other bills would be paid regularly and that Nancy would
have a small fund of spending money as she grew.

Who she really was, where she had lived, the reason for the mystery that
surrounded the affair, the lawyer would not, or could not explain. He
had left Malden soon afterward, but was established in Cincinnati--and
he met all Nancy's bills promptly and asked each quarter-day after her
health. But he showed no further interest in the little girl.

As for Nancy herself, she remembered nothing before her appearance at
the school. And that was not strange. She was a kindergartner when Miss
Prentice accepted the responsibility of training her--the very youngest
and smallest girl who had ever come to Higbee School.

Miss Prentice was too firm a disciplinarian to be a very warm-hearted
woman. Save for Miss Trigg's awkward attempts at motherliness, and the
surreptitious hugs and kisses of certain womanly servan