Nan Sherwoods Winter Holidays | Page 5

a common little thing. And I don't believe they came honestly by
that money they brought from Scotland."
"Oh, Linda!" gasped Cora.
"Well, I don't!" declared the stubborn girl. "There is a mystery about
the Sherwoods being rich, at all. I know they were as poor as church
mice in Tillbury until Nan came here to school. I found that out from a
girl who used to live there."
"Not Bess Harley?"
"No, indeed! Bess wouldn't tell anything bad about Nan. I believe she
is afraid of Nan. But this girl I mean wrote me all about the
Sherwoods."
"Nan is dreadfully close-mouthed," agreed Cora, who was a weak girl
and quite under Linda's influence.
"Well! Those Sherwoods were never anything in Tillbury. How Bess
Harley came to take up with Nan, the goodness only knows. Her father
worked in one of the mills that shut down last New Year. He was out of
work a long time and then came this fortune in Scotland they claim was
left Mrs. Sherwood by an old uncle, or great uncle. I guess it's nothing
much to brag about."
"Bess said once it might be fifty thousand dollars," said Cora, speaking
the sum unctuously. Cora was poor herself and she loved money.
"Oh, maybe!" exclaimed Linda Riggs, tossing her head. "But I guess
nobody knows the rights of it. Maybe it isn't so much. You know that
there were other heirs who turned up when Nan's father and mother got
over to Scotland, and one while Nan thought she would have to leave
school because there wasn't money enough to pay her tuition fees."
"Yes, I know all about that," admitted Cora, hurriedly. She had a vivid
remembrance of the unfinished letter from Nan to her mother, which

she had found and shown to Linda. Cora was not proud of that act. Nan
had never been anything but kind to her and secretly Cora did not
believe this ill-natured history of Nan Sherwood that Linda repeated.
Those of my readers who have read the first volume of this series,
entitled "Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp, Or, The Old Lumberman's
Secret," will realize just how much truth and how much fiction entered
into the story of Nan's affairs related by the ill-natured Linda Riggs.
When Mr. and Mrs. Sherwood started for Scotland to make sure of the
wonderful legacy willed to Nan's mother by the Laird of Emberon's
steward, Nan was sent up into the Peninsula of Michigan to stay with
her Uncle Henry and Aunt Kate Sherwood at a lumber camp. Her
adventures there during the spring and summer were quite exciting. But
the most exciting thing that had happened to Nan Sherwood was the
decision on her parents' part that she should go with her chum, Bess
Harley, to Lakeview Hall, a beautifully situated and popular school for
girls on the shore of Lake Huron.
In "Nan Sherwood at Lakeview Hall, Or, The Mystery of the Haunted
Boathouse," the second volume of the series, were narrated the
incidents of Nan's first term at boarding school. She and Bess made
many friends and had some rivals, as was natural, for they were very
human girls, in whom no angelic quality was over-developed.
In Linda Riggs, daughter of the rich and influential railroad president,
Nan had an especially vindictive enemy. Nan had noticed Linda's
eagerness to hear all the ill-natured fat man had to say about Mr.
Sherwood.
"I do wish Linda had not heard that horrid man speak so of Papa
Sherwood," Nan said to Bess Harley, as they toiled up the hill again
after the overturning of the _Sky-rocket_.
"Oh, what do you care about Linda?" responded Bess.
"I care very much about what people say of my father," Nan said. "And
the minute I get home I'm going to find out what that Bulson meant."

CHAPTER III
AN ADVENTURE ON THE RAIL
That adventurous afternoon on Pendragon Hill was the last chance the
girls of Lakeview Hall had that term for bobsledding. School closed the
next day and those pupils who lived farthest away, and who went home
for the holidays, started that very evening by train from Freeling.
Nan and her chum, Bess Harley, were two who hurried away from the
Hall. Tillbury was a night's ride from Lakeview Hall, and the chums
did not wish to lose any of their short stay at home.
It had already been planned and agreed to that Nan and Bess were to go
to Chicago to visit in the Masons' home during a part of this vacation,
and the two friends, who knew very little of city life, were eager indeed
for the new experience.
Walter and Grace had started for Chicago that morning, and when the
two Tillbury girls saw how hard it was