"Oh, I wish I had Jennie for a roommate," thought Nancy Nelson. "I really would be happy then, I do believe."
But this day seemed not to be a bad one for Nancy, after all. Cora waited for her, with her skates, after recitations were over, and they joined a party of Cora's chums on the way to the river.
Grace Montgomery was not among these; Grace never had a word for Nancy, so the younger girl kept away from the senator's daughter.
But the river was broad, and the ice was like glass, and in the exhilaration of the sport Nancy forgot snubs and back-biting, and all the ill-natured slights under which she had suffered since becoming a dweller in Number 30, West Side, Pinewood Hall.
She noted one thing that afternoon. Few of the girls skated toward the railroad bridge; but most of them to the school bounds in the other direction. The reason for skating down the river instead of up Nancy did not at first understand. Then she heard some of Cora's friends talking and laughing about it.
"Guess the old doctor has a grouch again. Isn't that mean? There isn't a boy in sight."
"I'll wager the old doctor has a channel sawed through the ice at the bend here before he lets the boys out," declared a third.
"I _did_ want so to see Bob Endress," Grace Montgomery complained. "I want him to bring a lot of nice boys home from the Academy at the holidays, so as to have them at my party."
It struck Nancy that she had heard this Bob Endress spoken of before; but she had no idea that there was any reason why _she_ should be interested in him.
The girls came in from the ice half an hour before supper, cold, tired, but merry. Nancy ran up to tidy her hair and wash. She found two of Cora's chief chums in Number 30; but Cora herself chanced to be out.
These girls did not even notice Nancy when she came in. But that was not strange. Often a dozen would come and go at Number 30 without once speaking to the quiet little girl who occupied one-half of the dormitory.
"Well, you take it from me," one was saying to the other while Nancy brushed her hair, "she's got to do her share. It looks to me as though she was sponging."
"Everybody else has put up for a fudge party, or something of the kind, while she hasn't done a thing."