Some days later the Whatnot Shop was being dismantled, that is the shelves were being treated to a great clearing off, and the old-fashioned glass cases were being lined with white oilcloth, preparatory to Miss Manners’ Domestic Science Class storing their samples of food therein.

Gradually Nancy’s sense of honor was coming back into its own, for not only her mother but also her girl friends were constantly reassuring her.

“There’s nothing small nor frivolous about changing one’s mind for the better,” they told her. “In fact,” said the mother, “that one is willing to do so, is very often a mark of progress. If we didn’t change our minds how could we grow wiser?”

“But I thought I’d just love business,” Nancy complained. “I was crazy to keep store and now I’m crazy to start something else.”

“Which is perfectly normal and entirely reasonable for any healthy young girl,” her mother insisted. “Can you imagine girls being as staid and as old fashioned as their mothers?”

“Moth-thur!” Nancy sort of moaned, “If ever I could be as new fashioned as my mother I shouldn’t mind how old nor how young I might be. And you are a love not to scold me. I know you are glad to see Manny so happy setting-up her school, and I know you will be better satisfied to have her there, facing the fierce public, than allowing me to do so. Not that I had any trouble with the dear public,” Nancy mocked. “And not that Brother Ted wasn’t always within a few miles call if I needed him. But, at any rate, Mums, I did make some real money, didn’t I?” she cooed, quite birdlike for Nancy.

A clean little, yellow bankbook was offered for evidence by Mrs. Brandon at this question, for being a business woman, she knew the value of personal interest in every part of a business undertaking, and so, early in the experiment, she had brought Nancy into the City Bank and there attended to the formalities of opening her bank account.

“Mother, you keep the book, please,” Nancy begged just now, as Mrs. Brandon offered it to her. “I know I ought to be very careful and not forget where I put things, but somehow I do. And I would hate to lose that precious book,” she murmured, touching her mother’s cheek with her lips as she made the appeal.

“Very well, daughter,” Mrs. Brandon conceded, “but you simply must learn to remember, and the way to do that is think of a thing as you do it,” she advised.

Nancy was, however, already improving in such matters. Being obliged to find things for herself, instead of calling out to Anna, the maid, as she had been in the habit of doing, was teaching a lesson that words had never been able to convey to her.

It now lacked but three days of the opening of the class, and in these days Nancy and Ted were planning to have a great time fishing, exploring, and hunting. By “hunting” they meant looking for Indian relics along the river bank, for Ted insisted there really were such articles to be found there, if one were only patient enough in the search.

This was the day set for fishing, and Ted was just now coming up to the back door with a tin can slung on a string, and that, in turn, was slung over his shoulder on a pole.

“Got lots of them!” he called out. “Nice fat ones, too. We can catch big fish with such worms as these,” and he set down the outfit to display his freshly dug bait.

“Well, I’m not going to put them on the hook,” protested Nancy. “I don’t mind handling the slippery little things, but I can’t murder them. You’ll have to bait my hook, Ted, if you want me to go,” she insisted.

“Oh, all right,” growled Ted, merely pretending to protest, but really just showing his boyish contempt for such girlish whims. “I’ll put them on for you. But do hurry, Nan,” he urged. “This is a dandy morning to fish. Hardly any sun at all.”

Calling good-bye to Miss Manners, who, even, this early, was at work in the store, Nancy was soon ready to start off with her brother on the fishing trip. She was clad in her oldest gingham, and wore her most battered big straw hat, nevertheless she looked quite picturesque, if not really pretty even in this rough attire; for Nancy was ever a striking looking girl.

“Think we ought to take your old express wagon, Ted?” she asked, jokingly.

“What for?” demanded the boy in surprise.

“To carry them home in,” laughed Nancy. But even then Ted didn’t see the joke.

Presently they were trudging along the heavily shaded road that wound in and out around Bird’s Woods until it would stretch along side Oak’s Pond, where the fishing was to be done.

“It’s fine to have you come, Nan,” remarked the boy, wagging his bare head and slapping his fish bag against his bare legs. Ted was wearing old clothes himself, and his trousers had not been trimmed any too evenly, for one leg ended above the knee and the other leg ended below the other knee. But he looked about right as a fisher-boy, his cheeks well tanned, his brown eyes sparkling and his browner hair doing pretty much as it pleased all over his head.

“I’m mighty glad to come, Ted,” Nancy was saying in reply to his gentle little compliment. “It is great to be off all by ourselves, although, of course, I have good enough times with the girls,” she amended, loyally.

“Me too,” added Ted, “I have lots of sport with the fellows but this is better,” he concluded, as Ted would.

Arrived at a spot where the pond dug into a soft green bank, rounding into a beautiful semi-circular basin, brother and sister there camped. Ted insisted that Nancy take the choicest seat, a smooth spot on the big tree that must have been felled years before, and which had found comfortable quarters on the edge of the jolly little stream. Sympathetic ferns stretched their soft green fronds along the sides of the naked wood, as if they wanted to supply the fallen tree with some of the verdure of which it had been cruelly bereft, and even a gay, flowering swamp lily, that wonderful flaming flower that holds its chalice above all other wood blooms, bent just a little toward the one branch of that tree that still clung to the parent trunk.

Nancy squatted down expectantly. Ted had baited her hook and she was now casting out her line in the smooth, mysterious stream, clear enough on the surface, but darker than night beneath. She had removed her “sneaks” and stockings, so that she might enjoy the freedom of dipping her toes into the little ripples that played around the log.

“I don’t care whether I catch anything or not,” she remarked, “it’s lovely just to sit here and fish.”

“We’ll catch, all right,” Ted assured her. “This is a great place for fish—regular nest of them in under these rocks.” He shifted a little on his perch, which was on a live tree that leaned out of the stream.

Presently Nancy developed a song from the tune she had been humming:

“Singing eyly-eely-ho! Eyly-eely-ho!”

“Got to keep quiet when you fish,” Ted interrupted her.

“All right,” agreed Nancy affably. “But that tune has been simmering all day and I just had to let it light up. Say Ted,” she began all over again, “did you hear about your friend, Mr. Sanders, getting rich?”

“Rich? I’m glad of it. He’s all right,” the boy declared, flipping his line to a new spot.

“Yep-py, rich,” Nancy repeated. “He’s living at the hotel.”

“Oh, I knew that,” scoffed the boy, airily.

“Did you? Then why didn’t you tell me?”

“Secret,” snapped Ted, shutting his lips with a snap that even a venturesome fish might have heard.

“And the Townsends—they are quite prosperous too,” Nancy pressed further.

“Ye-ah.” Ted was not encouraging the confidence.

For a few moments neither of them spoke again. Then Nancy’s line began to draw, to pull out into a straight line.

“Easy!” whispered Ted. “You’ve got a bite! Don’t yank it. Wait until he’s on, good and tight!”

They waited, breathless. Then Ted, the experienced, gave the signal, and Nancy, the amateur, drew very gently on her pole. Up, up, but still under water, until suddenly the water surface freed the capture, and something black, shiny, snaky, dangled violently from the upheld line!

“Oh, Ted, quick! It’s a snake! Look a snake!” cried Nancy, getting to her feet finally, after slipping several times on the smooth log.

“Look out,” yelled Ted, for the black slimy thing dangling on Nancy’s line seemed to be making directly for her face, as it swung back and forth and darted violently toward the shore.

“Oh-h-h-h-h!” Nancy screamed. “He’s going for—” But she was taking no further chances, instead, she flung her pole, line and hook and catch, as far from her as a single fling could send it. The pole floated contentedly but the slimy thing was again hidden in its beloved waters, although it must have still been impaled upon the tortuous hook.

Ted looked a moment at the lost outfit.

“Nancy,” he said gloomily. “You’re crazy. That was a fine, fat eel, and they’re hard to catch that way. And look at—your—pole.”

“I’ll get it,” decided the surprised girl, instantly slipping down from the log and leaning out over the stream.

“Don’t!” yelled Ted. But the warning was given too late, for as Nancy stepped on what seemed to be grass, she found herself thrust into the water, deep enough to frighten her of something worse than a snake.

“Oh!” she yelled again. “I’ve got to swim out, I’ll smother in the bog if—I—don’t.” And so saying she flung her body free from the deep marsh-grass, and struck out in an emergency stroke toward the open stream.

“Go up to the cove!” Ted yelled. “Just around that pine tree! I’ll meet you there!”

The light clothing she wore was not much more cumbersome than some bathing suits are often found to be, so that Nancy, a capable swimmer, was now pulling surely toward the cove, while Ted was racing, as best he could in the heavy undergrowth to meet her as she would land.

But just as Nancy turned in to a clear little corner to make her landing, she heard a muffled call.

“Help! Help!” came the indistinct cry.

Ted was abreast of her and he too heard the call.

“It’s over in the sand dunes,” he yelled, as Nancy stepped ashore and shook some of the heavy water from her clothing. “Quick, Nancy, the fellows went to play Indian there!”