Nan Sherwood at Lakeview Hall Part 13

Had it not been for Nan, Bess would never have found her way to Room Seven, Corridor Four, she was so blinded with angry tears. The room they were to occupy together was up two flights of broad stairs, and had a wide window overlooking the lake. Nan knew this to be the fact at once, for she went to the open window, heard the soughing of the uneasy waves on the pebbly beach far below, and saw the red, winking eye of the lighthouse at the mouth of Freeling Inlet.

"This is a lovely room, Bess," she declared, as she snapped on the electric light.

Bess banged the door viciously. "I don't care how nice it is! I sha'n't stay here!" she cried.

"Oh, pshaw, Bess! you don't mean that," returned Nan.

"Yes, I do--so now! I won't remain to be insulted by these girls! My mother won't want me to. I shall write her----"

"You _wouldn't_?" cried Nan, in horror.

"Why wouldn't I?"

"You don't mean to say you would trouble and worry your mother about such a thing, just as soon as you get here?"

"We--ell!"

"I wouldn't do that for anything," Nan urged. "And, besides, I don't think the girls meant any real harm."

"That homely, red-headed Polk girl is just as mean as she can be!"

"But she has to take jokes herself about her red hair."

"I don't care!" grumbled Bess. "She has no right to play such mean tricks on _me_. Why did she tell me to take that horrid old lunch box in to supper?"

"Because she foresaw just what would happen," chuckled Nan.

"Oh! you can laugh!" cried Bess.

"We should not have been so gullible," Nan declared. "That was a perfectly ridiculous story Laura told us about the food being so poor and scanty, and we should not have believed it."

Bess was staring at her with angry sparks in her eyes. She suddenly burst out with:

"That old lunch box! If it hadn't been for you, Nan Sherwood, we would not have brought it here with us."

"Why----Is that quite right, Bess?" gently suggested Nan.

"Yes, it is!" snapped her chum. "If you had taken my advice you would have flung it out of the window and eaten in the dining car in a proper manner."

There were a good many retorts Nan might have made. She wanted to laugh, too. It did seem so ridiculous for Bess to carry on so over a silly joke. She was making a mountain out of a molehill.

But it would be worse than useless to argue the point, and to laugh would surely make her chum more bitter--perhaps open a real breach between them that not even time could heal.

So Nan, in her own inimitable, loving way, put both arms suddenly about Bess and kissed her. "I'm awfully sorry, dear; forgive me," she said, just as though the fault was all hers.

Bess broke down and wet Nan's shoulder with her angry tears. But they were a relief. She sobbed out at last:

"I hope I'll never, _never_ see a shoe-box lunch again! I just do----"

To interrupt her came a solemn summons on the door of Number Seven--_rap, rap, rap!_ The two newcomers to Lakeview Hall looked at each other, startled.

CHAPTER XI

THE PROCESSION OF THE SAWNEYS

"Goodness! what can that be?" demanded Nan.

Rap! rap! rap! the knock was repeated.

"Did you lock that door, Bess?" exclaimed Nan.

Before her chum could answer, the k.n.o.b was turned and the door swung slowly open. Several figures crowded about the opening portal. It was no summons by one of the teachers, as Nan and Bess had expected. The first figure that appeared clearly to the startled vision of the two chums was rather appalling.

It was a tall girl with a pillow case drawn over her head and shoulders.

Her arms were thrust through two holes in the sides and she could see through two smaller holes burned in the pillow case. She leaned on a broom, the brush part of which was also covered with white muslin. Upon this background was drawn a horned owl in charcoal.

This horned owl was no more solemn than were the girls themselves who came filing in behind their leader. They came in two by two and circled around the work table which was set across the room at the foot of the two beds. The second couple bore a big tea-tray and on that tray reposed--_the forgotten lunch box Bess had dropped under the supper table!_

Poor Bess uttered a horrified gasp; Nan came near disgracing herself in her chum's eyes forever, by exploding into laughter. There was a faint giggle from some hysterical girl down the line and the leader rapped smartly upon the floor with the handle of the decorated broom.

"Ladies!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the leader, her voice somewhat m.u.f.fled behind the pillowslip.

"Votes for women!" was the faint response from somewhere in the line.

"Silence in the ranks!" exclaimed Laura Polk, s.n.a.t.c.hing the tin tray away from her partner and banging on it with her fist. The lunch box, decorated with a soiled bow of violet ribbon, had been placed on the table.

"Ladies!" repeated the girl behind the mask. "We have with us to-night, in our very midst, as it were, two sawneys who should be initiated into all the rites and mysteries of Lakeview Hall."

"Hear! hear!" sepulchrally came from the red-haired girl.

"You'd better keep still, too, Laura," admonished another girl.

"Oh! very well!" answered Laura.

"These sawneys must be taught their place," pursued the leader of the gay company.

The term "sawney" in the lumber camps and upon the Great Lakes, means tyro, or novice. These girls had picked up the phrase from their brothers, without doubt. Bess thought it a particularly objectionable name.

"First of all," said the girl in the pillowslip, "they must join our procession and march as shall be directed. Fall in, sawneys, behind the first two guards. Refuse at your peril!"

Nan's mind was already made up. This was only fun--it was a great game of ridicule. To refuse to join in the sport would mark her and Bess for further, and future, punishment.

Before her chum could object, Nan seized her and ran her right into line ahead of the red-haired girl and her companion.