It seemed but a very short time later that Nancy was again awakened. But now the sunshine was streaming into her room, and she heard Miss Manners talking down in the hall, in a suppressed voice.

“The children are not up yet,” she was saying. “But come in, Ruth. You see we were somewhat disturbed—”

“Come on up, Ruth!” called out Nancy. “Come up and hear about our par-tee!”

Ruth came up promptly, and the story of the broken water pipe was presently being told her, brokenly.

“How perfectly—thrill-ing!” she commented in her well known characterization of the affected Vera. “But you should have had Nero turn off the water—”

“I’ll bet he could too,” shouted Ted from his room. Ted never lost a chance to praise Nero.

“But just listen to my story,” Ruth begged. “I’ve got a thrilling yarn, too.”

“Then, wait until I get propped up for it,” ordered Nancy. “I can’t hear comfortably when I’m down.” She put her two pillows under her shoulders and assumed a most affected air of the tired society girl after her dance. Even a cap was improvised from a twisted stocking, a lacy robe was concocted from her thin, soft slip, and the luxurious effect was completed by Ruth piling upon the bed a bunch of mussed up store paper—the morning mail!

“There now,” said Ruth, “I hope you can hear. Although I must say you are not well cast. The character for you, Nan, is that of a short haired lady at a big desk, her eyes bulging out of goggles and her waist line strapped into a belt. You know—”

“Yes, I know,” admitted Nancy, “but I like this better—it’s more becoming, isn’t it?” Another pose and a shift of the lacy robe. Then Nancy appeared ready to hear Ruth’s story.

“You sold the place!” Ruth blurted out without a hint of its coming.

“The place?”

“Yes. To Lady Cullen. And she said positively over the long distance last night to Dad, that she never would have bought it but for you.”

“Of course, she would,” scoffed Nancy.

“Nope. Dad said that place just wouldn’t sell. He and his men have shown it to so many. But dear Mrs. Cullen!” Ruth sighed foolishly. “She told Dad that the young lady was so enthusiastic over the place that she was positive her granddaughter, Naomi, would react in the same way. Notice that Nan, re-act.”

“Yeah,” drawled Nancy. “That’s what this is—I’m—re-acting,” and she fell further back among her pillows.

“But really, Nan, it is true,” insisted Ruth, laying hold of one of Nancy’s long, slender hands. “And you needn’t blush about it, either. I think the way you blush under that olive skin of yours—” But a pillow, vigorously applied to Ruth’s face, checked further compliments.

“If you don’t want to hear,” Ruth presently continued.

“Of course I do. I’m just as glad as glad, Ruth, that your dad has sold the place, but I know very well Mrs. Cullen would have bought it anyhow.”

“She wouldn’t. Dad says so, she says so—I say—says—so,” declared Ruth. “And if you don’t believe it just listen to this.” She changed her position sitting up very straight and facing Nancy very positively to make the statement most emphatic. “Mrs. Cullen very tactfully suggested that your interest and your success be—remunerated.”

“Ruth!”

“Now, don’t let me hurt your feelings, Nan, but Dad would honestly love to have you accept.”

“I won’t,” declared Nancy, blushing furiously now. “The idea—”

“Then, he will talk to your mother about it. Do you know, little girl, what a lot of money a big sale like that brings to Dad’s firm? And how much he would have to pay out in commission to the man who succeeded in making the sale?”

“I know one thing,” said Nancy, shifting herself out of the bed and planting two bare feet firmly upon the floor, “I’m being made a business woman, a store-keeper, a cooking school director, a plumber and now a real-estate agent. I don’t mind being a few things but that’s quite a—lot!”

“You haven’t said Enthusiast,” Ruth reminded her, “that is what counts most. But Nancy, you really ought to consider,” pressed Ruth. “The money would mean so much to your mother, and you have a perfect right to it. I knew the way you were tearing around that big place, that you would flim-flam Cullen,” joked Ruth. “And Dad says, a hundred dollars isn’t anything on a fifteen thousand dollar deal—”

“Fifteen thousand!”

“Yes, all of that. And here’s the little one hundred check,” Ruth was pressing a slip of paper into Nancy’s unwilling hand. “Dad will be dreadfully disappointed if you refuse—you’re not too proud, are you?”

“Too proud!” and the black eyes snapped little pin points of sparks. “No, indeed, I mean to be a business woman, like mother, and I don’t care how soon I start,” proclaimed Nancy, firmly.

“Spoken like—Nancy Brandon!” hailed Ruth, gleefully, for she had known all along what a task it would be to get Nancy to take the check. And just as she had honestly stated, the amount given Nancy was but a small fraction of that which a man from Mr. Ashley’s office would have had to receive for the same service.

Unbelieving, Nancy stared at the check.

“One hundred dollars!” she murmured, her eyes now beaming with anticipation. “And mother’s vacation only three days off!”

“But please, Nan,” Ruth hurried to change the subject, “don’t go away to parts unknown and leave me pining here. Of course, there are lots of girls—hanging around,” she smiled very prettily and looked very dimply as she said this, “but since you came to Long Leigh, Nan, the other girls don’t count as much as they did.”

“I suppose,” said Nancy in her “twinkling” way, “that may be because I’m such a freak. I’m a lot of fun—”

“Nan—cee!”

“Ruth—ee!”

And they finished the argument with a very pardonable show of affection, if it was only a sound slap on Nancy’s not fully clothed shoulders and a pretty good whack on Ruth’s plump little thigh.

When Nancy was alone again, (for Ruth was to meet the girls at Isabel’s and they were all going for a swim before their ten o’clock cooking lesson,) she smoothed out the little blue check lovingly. It was so strange to think that money was acquired through mere enthusiasm. That Mrs. Cullen would have decided to buy that enormous place merely upon Nancy’s—enthusiasm. That the cooking school had been started and was successfully running because of her—enthusiasm!

“Perhaps,” she told the reflection in her glass, “it’s a good thing to despise some kinds of work if it makes one enthusiastic for other kinds. But even now,” she was insisting to that same mocking smile, “I can make a very good cake.”

To meet the girls at the lake, Nancy took a short cut up, over the hill that would lead her past the old stone house. She had hurried her breakfast and made sure that Miss Manners did not need her help to get ready for the class, then, gowned in the easiest thing to put on—and off, her lavender gingham, she raced off up the hill.

But she never could hurry past the stone house; everything around it held fascination for Nancy, even the half-formed dread that someone or something would drop down from the sky, or spring up out of the earth, as Mr. Sanders had formerly been accused of doing. So, instead of crossing the fence where the old cedar tree had broken through and had thus made an opening, Nancy continued on up through the stone path that would bring her out at the apple orchard.

“As if there could be anything weird in this open place,” she was saying. “Why, the old cistern over there looks as spic-span as when folks used to draw water from it, and I’m sure,” she was thinking, “a turned upside-down rain-barrel shows care and attention—no mosquitoes can breed in that.”

She stood a few moments to enjoy the soft summer scene, for it was not yet quite time to meet the girls, when from the direction of the rain-barrel she head a whine, a cat’s cry, surely.

“Some poor cat maybe caught in briars,” Nancy decided promptly, as again came a piteous meaow of a kitten or a cat.

Following the call Nancy hurried in its direction.

“Here puss?” she called. “Kitty-kitty-kitty!”

The cry stopped as her voice called to it. It was not near the rain barrel, Nancy now decided, but over by the cistern. Quickly she turned in that direction, but when within a few feet of the square little box that covered the artificial well, she was suddenly startled by a noise—a queer noise.

“What’s that?” was her unspoken question.

She listened. It was a man’s voice, singing!

“Where, where—can that be!” she murmured half aloud, meanwhile unconsciously walking toward the cistern.

Then a hammering! A buzzing!

“Oh!” screamed Nancy in alarm, now realizing that she had been hearing something very strange indeed. “Oh, I must—get—away!” was her wild determination, as she turned and dashed down the hill, making her way this time through the opening in the fence where the cedar tree had fallen.