"Oh--well--I forgot that," returned Nan, meekly. "But I know you loved me before we had any prospect of having money, Bess. Don't let's toady to rich girls when we get to this school. Let's pick our friends by some other standard."
"I guess you're right," agreed her chum. "I've had a lesson. That hateful thing! But if she does tell stories about us to the other girls----"
"We can disprove them by Professor Krenner," added Nan. "Don't worry."
"I don't like him," repeated Bess, pouting.
But Nan did. She was quite sure the instructor with the big, shell-rimmed spectacles, understood girls very well indeed, and that he would be a good friend and a jolly companion if one would allow him to be.
There was that about Professor Krenner that reminded her of her own dear father. They were both given to little, dry jokes; they were both big men, with large, strong hands; and they were both very observant.
How she would get along with the other instructors at Lakeview Hall, and with Dr. Beulah Prescott, herself, Nan did not know; but she felt that she and Professor Krenner would always be good friends.
Nor was she afraid of what Linda might say about her at the Hall. Nan Sherwood was deeply hurt by the girl's arrogance and unkindness; but she had too large a fund of good sense to be disturbed, as Bess was, over Linda's threatened scandal.
"I don't believe a girl like her really has much influence among other girls--not the right kind of girls, at any rate," Nan thought. "And Bess and I don't want to get in with any other kind."
She was just as eager as she could be, however, to get to Lakeview Hall, and find out what it and the girls were like. Boarding school was an unknown world to Nan. She felt more confidence now in herself, as the train bore her toward the wild Huron shore on which the school stood, than she had when she journeyed up into the Michigan woods with her Uncle Henry, back in mid-winter.
In that past time she was leaving her dear parents and they were leaving her. Each revolution of the car wheels were widening the space between "Momsey" and "Papa Sherwood," and herself. By this time Nan had grown used to their absence. She missed them keenly--she would do that up to the very moment that they again rejoined her; but the pain of their absence was like that of an old wound.
