Alma looked at her repentantly out of two large, grave blue eyes.
"I--I'm afraid I rather made a mess of everything yesterday, Nancy," she said, hanging her head and picking at the soft fur, which somehow had lost a good deal of its charm for her; then, all at once, evidently touched by the droll naïveté of the sad remark, Nancy burst out laughing.
"You poor, funny lamb! I'm always worrying you to death," she said. "Don't bother any more, Alma. I'm sick of bothering, myself. We'll manage to solve the problem somehow. Only, dearest," she grew sober again, "please--please don't--I don't want to say it again,--but think over what I said to you. I'm sure that you will see that I'm very nearly right. Come, now--you'd better tidy yourself. I'm going to dress." She bent over Alma and kissed her lightly. As she went toward the door Mildred met her. They looked at each other coolly, Mildred barely giving her a nonchalant nod, and then ignoring her altogether.
"Hello, honey-pie. Don't tell me you've been weeping briny tears all afternoon over what Leland said to you," she cried gaily to Alma. "Goodness, what a penitent! What's the point in having a good time if you're going to regret it like that? I have the right idea--I make it a point never to regret anything."
Nancy walked slowly back to her own room, and dressed for dinner in silence. It seemed to her that she might indeed be "sick of bothering," but that did not prevent there being a good deal for her to bother about.
It was the custom of Miss Leland's school to hold the mid-year examinations before the Christmas holidays, early in December, so that the teachers and the girls might enjoy their holidays without the shadow of that depressing necessity hanging over them, and so that they might apply themselves to the preparation for them while they were still in the habit of studying. Miss Leland held the opinion that after the gay indolence of the holiday season, and when the girls were still in the state of homesickness and lassitude following their return to school, they were much less interested in making good marks, and much less capable of applying themselves.
Thus, the first week of a snowy December found the entire school in that state of tension which seizes any body of young people when a hostile body of older people is bent upon finding out how much they know.