It did not seem possible that Manny’s school had been successfully opened two weeks ago! That the girls in her class, at first numbering eight now counted fourteen, each paying five dollars for the month’s training in domestic science, with lessons three mornings a week. Fourteen pupils at five dollars each and every single one paid in advance, while Nancy was acting as class president and Ruth as class secretary; these were, indeed, auspicious arrangements.

And besides the seventy dollars paid Miss Manners for tuition, the class members brought their own supplies and were privileged to take them home with them, in the form of various tempting dishes, “the like of which” as Nancy expressed it, “never had been seen in Long Leigh before nor since.”

“Maybe you don’t know you’re a wonder,” Ruth remarked very casually to Nancy, while she, as secretary, was consulting with Nancy as president. “I can cook better now than I ever expected to in my whole life. And as for Isabel! She’s so enthusiastic, her mother says she has to restrain her from going into the boarding house business. You should just taste Belle’s 'Cherry Moss.’ Um-m-m! It was de-lic-ious!” and Ruth smacked her lips to the echo. “Her brother Tom wanted to know why we didn’t make up a class for boys. He was in the army, you know, and so thinks himself very efficiently trained.”

“Isn’t it great?” Nancy remarked, referring, of course, to the success of the class. “And for a laggard, an idler and one who positively hated the very letters that spelled cooking, I think I’m doing pretty well myself. I made a fudge cake yesterday and mother carried it out to set before the library ladies, can you imagine that? A cake that I made! After my heartbreaking experience with the ungreased pans!”

It was very early in the afternoon and Ruth, with Nancy, was putting the class room in order. She had remained over to lunch as she often did, and the two chums found pleasure in arranging the white covered tables, the shining pans, the numbered spoons and other utensils. It was all so much pleasanter than doing anything in an ordinary kitchen.

The gas range, that was sent in to Miss Manners as a demonstrator’s sample, was majestically white and really quite attractive, if such an article can be called attractive, and just how Nancy hovered rather lovingly over it, polishing with the very softest, whitest cloth the impeccable, enameled surface.

Ruth had been finishing a little memorandum in her oilcloth covered book. She laid the book down now and strolled over to Nancy. In their white aprons and white caps, Nancy and Ruth looked too picturesque to be passed by without compliment.

Ruth wound her arm around Nancy’s shoulder. “I wonder,” she said, “why we sometimes think that all play is more fun?”

“I never did,” replied Nancy, innocently. “My trouble always has been in finding enough different things to do.” She looked rather pathetically into the soft gray eyes that were caressing her own darker orbs. There was no impulsive hugging, nor other ordinary demonstrations of affections dear to the average emotional girls, for Nancy was not given to extremes, nor was Ruth addicted to such flagrant sentiment.

The two girls were especially happy just now. Nancy was accomplishing more, much more, than she had ever hoped to do, with her little shop that first brought real financial help to her mother, and was now doing as much for Miss Manners. Besides all this, it was giving the girls themselves a very useful, as well as enjoyable, summer diversion. Ruth, although a new friend of Nancy’s, had become a very fond friend indeed, for the frank, original and genuine qualities of Nancy were unmistakable in their sincerity, and it was easy enough for any girl to love her—if she could but get near enough to her to know her.

“And you don’t think it shows a weakness to be so changeable?” Nancy asked Ruth. “I just can’t seem to be happy unless I’m planning something new.”

“Why, that’s—that’s a sign of originality,” replied Ruth, smoothing Nancy’s cap on her dark hair. “Some day you’ll do something wonderful—”

“About the girls,” Nancy interrupted. “Don’t you think we were fortunate to get the Riker girls to join the class? They seem to represent the smart set at Upper Crust Hill, and they brought at least five others along.”

“Nancy, our school is the talk of Long Leigh. Lots of mothers think their girls should do something useful during the month of August, and I’d just like to see any mother find a study more useful than cooking—according to her ideas,” said Ruth.

“And Vera is going to take an extra hour for desserts,” Nancy went on. “I can see Vera the pride of her family some day. Such home talent may be inherited. We haven’t any of it in our family, I’m afraid,” said Nancy, regretfully.

“But you’ve got something more precious,” Ruth assured her. “I never saw three folks so like one person as you three are, and yet you are all individually different; if you know what I mean.”

“I do,” said Nancy. “And you’re a dear, Ruth. What would I have done out here without you?”

“Taken the stylish Vivian Riker to your heart,” teased Ruth. “She’s a beauty.”

There was a stir outside.

“Look who’s here!” interrupted Nancy, jumping up and hurrying toward the door. “Ted! And he’s got the threatened new dog with him. Come and see!”

The threatened new dog was indeed being coaxed along by Ted, but he didn’t look exactly new. In fact, his coat was matted and shaggy, his tail hung down without a bit of “pep” in it, and even his long, long-haired ears seemed too discouraged to pick up the kindest words Ted was trying to pour into them.

“Nero!” announced Ted simply, as Nancy opened the door and Ted tried to push the melancholy Nero in.

“What ails him?” Nancy asked, looking the strange animal over, critically.

“Just nothin’ but lonesome,” replied the small boy cryptically.

“He looks pretty—blue,” Ruth commented, giving the dog a friendly but unappreciated pat on his shaggy head.

“Guess you’d be blue too, if you lived where he did,” Ted told Ruth. “That poor dog hadn’t a friend in the world until I found him. Here, Nero, come along and eat,” ordered Ted, while Nero followed him toward the back door through the erstwhile Whatnot Shop and present-time classroom. “He’s a fine dog,” the little fellow continued to praise, “and when I get him all fixed up he’ll be a beauty too,” he insisted stoutly.

“Maybe,” Nancy almost giggled as she looked after Ted and his dog. “But when you take him to the beauty shop, Ted, you better get him a real Russian bob, his hair is long enough to braid,” she commented gaily.

“You can laugh,” Ted retorted, “but he’s a thoroughbred—a one-man dog. He won’t notice you girls. Come on Nero, attaboy,” chanted Ted, importantly.

But being cooks, Nancy and Ruth could do no less than offer to provide Nero’s meal. Each thought he would like something else best, and each tried the other dish, pushing it under his indifferent nose and coaxing him with:

“Here Nero! Good! Eat! Eat-er-up!” etc.

But Nero merely sniffed disdainfully, snuggled his nose deeper into his flattened paws, and turned two big, brown adoring eyes up at his young master.

“Pity about him!” quoth Nancy. “Maybe he wants some of Isabel’s Cherry Moss. Just stew or beefsteak or even fried potatoes are not, it seems, on his diet bill.”

They were all out on the back porch, Ted squatted squarely beside the new dog, while the girls floated around Nero, like little tugs surrounding a big steamer.

“He doesn’t have to eat,” Ted remarked indifferently, “he had a free lunch on the way over.”

“He did!” screeched Nancy. “And you let us go to all this trouble!” She kicked the tin pan of water over in sheer disgust.

“Well, I thought he might like something else,” murmured the small boy, provokingly. “He only had a big soup bone and loaf of bread.”

Taking off their cooking-school caps and unbuttoning their aprons as they went, the girls wended their way back to the deserted class room.

“Can anyone beat that?” remarked Nancy, inelegantly. “Ted and his dog and the big—soup—bone! I could put a tune to that; a sad mournful dirgy tune.”

“Wherever do you suppose he picked up the brute?” Ruth asked. “I don’t remember having seen him around town.”

“Oh, trust Ted,” replied Nancy. “When we first came here, mother answered him once, in a most casual, unthinking way: 'Yes.’ It seemed his question was could he have a dog, and mother hadn’t been paying strict attention. Since then he’s been on a hunt for a dog. He brought home a poor half-dead little tatters one day, but some boy followed him up and claimed the beauty. I wonder if this one will be left to him? He seems pretty particular about his food, doesn’t he?”

“Yes,” replied Ruth, who was just glancing out the door. Suddenly she exclaimed:

“Here’s a taxi coming, and it’s the one mother always uses. I guess she’s sending for me, I’ll go out and see.”

Nancy looked out and saw Ruth talking earnestly to the driver. She seemed to be disagreeing with the message he was giving her, and she turned abruptly to come back to Nancy.

“Imagine that!” she panted, “Mother wants me to meet a train and take an old lady to see the Hilton house. As if I could show a house to one of father’s customers!” Ruth’s voice betrayed actual antipathy to the very idea.

“But why not?” queried Nancy. “If she is just an old lady—”

“A rich old lady who has come a distance without notifying father’s office, and there isn’t a man within call to take her out,” Ruth sighed miserably. The thought of showing a house seemed absolutely beyond her.

“I’ll go with you,” Nancy offered. “Why couldn’t we show a house? We know how to call out rooms, don’t we?”

Ruth jerked back her pretty head and stared at Nancy.

“All right,” she exclaimed, brightening perceptibly. “I’ll go if you promise to do the talking. I’m sure you can call off rooms and do more than that in the business line, Nancy. Let’s hurry. The train is almost due.”

So the two young “real estate ladies” were presently seated most circumspectly in the taxi, on the way to “meet a wealthy lady who wanted to look at the Hilton house.”

And Nancy was fairly aglow with the prospect of a new and interesting business adventure.