Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp | Page 5

Irishmen used to drill is now the assembly hall of the school."
"Sounds awfully interesting," admitted Nan.
"And Dr. Beulah Prescott, who governs the hall, the preceptress, you know, is really a very lovely lady, my mother says," went on the enthusiastic Bess. "MY mother went to school to her at Ferncliffe."
"Oh, Bess," Nan said warmly, "It must be a perfectly lovely place! But I know I can never go there."
"Don't you say that! Don't you say that!" cried the other girl. "I won't listen to you! You've just got to go!"
"I'm afraid you'll have to kidnap me, then," repeated Nan, with a rueful smile. "I'm very sure that my father won't be able to afford it, especially now that the mills will close."
"Oh, Nan! I think you're too mean," wailed her friend. "It's my pet project. You know, I've always said we should go to preparatory school together, and then to college."
Nan's eyes sparkled; but she shook her head.
"We sat together in primary school, and we've always been in the same grade through grammar and into high," went on Bess, who was really very faithful in her friendships. "It would just break my heart, Nan, if we were to be separated now."
Nan put her arm about her. They had reached the corner by Bess's big house where they usually separated after school.
"Don't you cry, honey!" Nan begged her chum. "You'll find lots of nice girls at that Lakeview school, I am sure. I'd dearly love to go with you, but you might as well understand right now, dear, that my folks are poor."
"Poor!" gasped Bess.
"Too poor to send me to Lakeview," Nan went on steadily. "And with the mills closing as they are, we shall be poorer still. I may have to get a certificate as Bertha Pike did, and go to work. So you mustn't think any more about my going to that beautiful school with you."
"Stop! I won't listen to you another moment, Nan Sherwood!" cried Bess, and sticking her fingers in her ears, she ran angrily away and up the walk to the front door.
Nan walked briskly away toward Amity Street. She did not turn back to wave her hand as usual at the top of the hill.

Chapter II
THE COTTAGE ON AMITY STREET
The little shingled cottage stood back from the street, in a deeper yard than most of its neighbors. It was built the year Nan was born, so the roses, the honeysuckle, and the clematis had become of stalwart growth and quite shaded the front and side porches.
The front steps had begun to sag a little; but Mr. Sherwood had blocked them up. The front fence had got out of alignment, and the same able mechanic had righted it and set the necessary new posts.
The trim of the little cottage on Amity Street had been painted twice within Nan's remembrance; each time her father had done the work in his spare time.
Now, with snow on the ground and frozen turf peeping out from under the half-melted and yellowed drifts, the Sherwood cottage was not so attractive as in summer. Yet it was a cozy looking house with the early lamplight shining through the kitchen window and across the porch as Nan approached, swinging her schoolbooks.
Papa Sherwood called it, with that funny little quirk in the corner of his mouth, "a dwelling in amity, more precious than jewels or fine gold."
And it was just that. Nan had had experience enough in the houses of her school friends to know that none of them were homes like her own.
All was amity, all was harmony, in the little shingled cottage on this short by-street of Tillbury.
It was no grave and solemn place where the natural outburst of childish spirits was frowned upon, or one had to sit "stiff and starched" upon stools of penitence.
No, indeed! Nan had romped and played in and about the cottage all her life. She had been, in fact, of rather a boisterous temperament until lately.
Her mother's influence was always quieting, and not only with her little daughter. Mrs. Sherwood's voice was low, and with a dear drawl in it, so Nan declared.
She had come from the South to Northern Illinois, from Tennessee, to be exact, where Mr. Sherwood had met and married her. She had grace and gentleness without the languor that often accompanies those qualities.
Her influence upon both her daughter and her husband was marked. They deferred to her, made much of her, shielded her in every way possible from all that was rude or unpleasant.
Yet Mrs. Sherwood was a perfectly capable and practical housekeeper, and when her health would allow it she did all the work of the little family herself. Just now she was having what she smilingly called "one of her lazy spells," and old Mrs. Joyce came in to do