And the spread which Cora planned was not to begin until all the lights were out and the teacher, whose turn it was to be on that night, had gone her rounds to see that all the dormitories were quiet.
"We'll take a night when Maybrick is on, if we can," said Cora. "She goes to bed to sleep! No prowling around for her after she has once decided that all the chickens are on the roost."
And Nancy, with a suspicion deep in her mind that it was all wrong, and yet willing to suffer much for the sake of gaining "popularity," so-called, allowed Cora to go ahead with the preparations for the coming surreptitious feast.
Nancy might have given too much thought and time to the coming "midnight spread," and neglected her lessons a bit had Cora Rathmore not taken the entire arrangements for the affair into her own hands. Cora did not seem to mind getting only "fair" marked on her weekly reports. She just shrugged her shoulders and said:
But before Nancy plucked up the courage to say anything about who was to be invited she found that Cora had already seen to that--Cora and Grace Montgomery.
"I'd like to have Jennie Bruce come," Nancy suggested timidly one day.
"Goodness! why didn't you say so before?" snapped Cora.
"We've made up the whole list, and the girls have been invited. We couldn't squeeze in another girl."
"Grace and I. Here it is," and Cora snapped a paper upon Nancy's desk.
Nancy read it over without comment. There wasn't a girl invited to the party at Number 30, West Side, whom Nancy liked any better than she did Cora herself! She began to doubt if the coming entertainment was going to be a success--as far as she was concerned--after all.
The girls ran in to see Cora again. Even Grace appeared in Number 30. But none of them spoke more than perfunctorily to Nancy, and the lonely girl felt herself as much "out of it" as ever.
But she had one enjoyment now that made up for many previous lonely hours at the school. She could skate!
Clinton River remained frozen over; the ice grew thicker and the lodgekeeper and Samuel reported each morning that it was perfectly safe.
The boys from the Academy, too, appeared. Nancy was not much interested in them--only curious. Even the girls of her own class seemed to be very desirous of making acquaintances among the Academy boys.