"Oh! you're awfully mean!" cried Linda, tears in her eyes.
"You're just fooling. You couldn't get the necklace without Mrs. Cupp's knowing it, and you know very well she declared last term that no girl should wear such an expensive thing at Lakeview Hall."
"Don't you bother, Miss. Mrs. Cupp isn't omnipotent," said Linda, more placidly. "And the Grand Guard Ball is not held at the Hall, thank goodness! You shall wear the coral necklace. It looks pretty next to the black lace in the neck of your gown. And it shall be yours to keep if you're a good girl. Now! what's all this you tried to tell me when you came in? I'm awake now," said Linda, luxuriating under Cora's deft hands.
Cora thrust the unfinished letter which she had found before Linda's eyes.
"Nan Sherwood's writing!" gasped Linda, pouncing on it at once. She read aloud:
"I love you! love you! And I wish I were where you are, or you were where I am. I'd love to let down your beautiful hair and brush it and make it all pretty again, as I used. I am so, _so_ lonely for you and Papa Sherwood that I don't so much mind if you don't ever get any of that money and have to come home, and we are poor again in 'the little dwelling in amity.' I so very much want to see you both that I hope you will come back from Scotland right away and we shall meet in dear old Tillbury and not have to be separated any more.
"I am thankful to you and Papa Sherwood for sending me to this nice school; and I enjoy it, and if everything were all right, I'd dearly love to stay. But I am so _hungry_ for a sight of you that I'll gladly give up school.
"And that is just what I must do, dear Momsey, and you must make Papa Sherwood agree. I won't let him spend any of that money he will have to raise on mortgage to pay the other half year's fees here. No, indeed!"
The letter ended there. Had Cora not been so much under Linda's influence she would have cried a bit over the tender lines Nan had written.
But Linda fairly exulted over the information which the letter gave.
"Isn't that great," she demanded excitedly. "Now we'll fix that Nan Sherwood! Got to leave, and her folks aren't going to be rich, after all! I don't suppose there was ever any chance of it, anyway. It was just talk. Ha! the nasty little thing. This will just fix her!"