Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch | Page 4

pretty face. She was not likely
to forget that trying time. She had been on a very different footing with
her schoolmates for the first few weeks of her life at Lakeview Hall
than she was now.
Rhoda Hammond, the new girl, seemed to apprehend something of this
change, for she said quickly and with much good sense:
"Well, if you two could stand it, and are evidently so much thought of
now, I'll grin and bear it, too. Though it isn't just as we are taught to
treat strangers out home. At Rose Ranch if a person is a tenderfoot we
try to make it particularly easy for him."
"Oh, my dear," drawled Bess, her eyes dancing, "it works just the
opposite at a girls' boarding school, believe me!"
Her chum, Nan, was for the moment not in a laughing mood. She could
scarcely realize now that she was the same Nan Sherwood who had
come so wonderingly and timidly to Lakeview Hall.
Of the Sherwoods there were only Nan and her father and mother. They
were an especially warmly attached trio and probably, if a most

wonderful and startling thing had not happened, Nan and Momsey and
Papa Sherwood would never have been separated, or been fairly shaken
out of their family existence, as they had been just about a year before
this present story opens.
The Sherwoods lived in a little cottage on Amity Street in Tillbury.
Bess Harley lived with her parents and brothers and sisters in the same
town; but they were much better off financially than the Sherwoods. Mr.
Sherwood was a foreman in the Atwater Mills, and when that company
abruptly closed down, Nan's father was thrown out of work and the
prospect of real poverty stared the Sherwoods in the face.
Then the unexpected happened. A distant relative of Mrs. Sherwood's
died, leaving her some property in Scotland. But it was necessary for
her to appear personally before the Scotch courts to obtain Hughie
Blake's fortune.
Circumstances were such, however, that her parents could not take Nan
with them. It was a hard blow to the girl; but she was plucky and ready
to accept the determination of Momsey and Papa Sherwood. When they
started for Scotland, Nan started for Pine Camp with her Uncle Henry,
and the first book of this series relates for the most part Nan's exciting
adventures in the lumber region of the Michigan Peninsula, under the
title of: "Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp; Or, the Old Lumberman's
Secret."
As has been mentioned, Nan and her chum, Bess Harley, had come to
Lakeview Hall the previous September. The matter of Momsey's
fortune had not then been settled in the Scotch courts; but enough
money had been advanced to make it possible for Nan to accompany
her chum to the very good boarding school on the shore of Lake Huron.
In "Nan Sherwood at Lakeview Hall; Or, the Mystery of the Haunted
Boathouse," the two friends are first introduced to boarding-school life,
and to this very merry, if somewhat thoughtless, company of girls that
have already been brought to the attention of the reader in our present
volume.

They were for the most part nice girls and, at heart, kindly intentioned;
but Nan had gone through some harsh experiences, as well as exciting
times, during the fall and winter semester at Lakeview Hall. She had
made friends, as she always did; and the Masons, Grace and Walter,
determined to have her with them in Chicago over the holidays.
Therefore, in the third volume of the series, "Nan Sherwood's Winter
Holidays; Or, Rescuing the Runaways," we find Nan and her chum
with their friends in the great city of the Lakes.
During those two weeks of absence from school Nan certainly had
experienced some exciting times. Included in her adventures were her
experiences in rescuing two foolish country girls who had run away to
be motion picture actresses. In addition Nan Sherwood had saved little
Inez, a street child, and had taken her back to "the little dwelling in
amity," as Papa Sherwood called their Tillbury home. For Nan's parents
had returned from across the seas, and she was beginning this second
semester at Lakeview Hall in a much happier state of mind in every
way than she had begun the first one.
It was only to be expected that Nan would try to make the coming of
the girl in brown, Rhoda Hammond, more pleasant than her own first
appearance at school had been.
But the girls who had remained at the Hall over the holidays were fairly
wild. At least, Mrs. Cupp said so, and Mrs. Cupp, Doctor Beulah
Prescott's housekeeper, ought to know for she had had complete charge
of the crowd during the intermission of studies.
"And, believe