Once in the hallway, the young people gazed rather fearfully about. But the place seemed quite empty of all human beings, although every door was stretched wide open; and through the long windows in the little drawing-room opening straight onto the lawn the rain was beating furiously.

“You had better shut up everything,” ordered Edward Bacon. “The place will be flooded in a minute.”

There were several bedrooms on the same floor, the villa being a one-story cottage; but they also were empty, as could be plainly seen from the open doors. Presently the students had closed all the casements against the driving rain and gathered in the drawing-room.

“I feel like Goldilocks and the three bears,” remarked Nancy, half laughing and half crying as she sat down in the drawing-room and looked about her with the air of a martyred saint.

We are obliged to admit that Nancy, having sacrificed her best hat, felt that she had made sufficient recompense for her sins.

The room was very simply furnished with wicker chairs and chintz curtains, but it possessed the peculiar charm of the English cottage with its deep casement windows, low ceilings and polished hardwood floors.

“I don’t seem to know this house,” observed the young man named Bulger.

“I was here last spring,” said Bixby. “It was closed then. The owner is usually abroad, a gardener told me.”

“Well, whoever he is, I hope heaven will reward him for giving us shelter in the time of storm,” remarked Edward.

Nancy shivered.

“Miss Brown is cold,” exclaimed one of the students. “Do you suppose the proprietor would mind if we set a match to his logs?”

“We’ll take the risk,” said another, lighting a pile of wood in the open fireplace.

“Polly, put the kettle on and we’ll all have tea,” commanded Edward, pointing to a tray on a wicker table on which were tea things ready for use.

The young man answering to the name of “Polly” obediently started the flame on the alcohol lamp, and another student, growing bolder still, penetrated the kitchen premises of the villa and returned with a handful of cups and saucers.

“Might as well be killed for a sheep as a lamb,” observed Edward. “Did you find any bread and butter in the larder?”

“No; tea biscuit,—a tin full,” cried “Polly,” depositing a tin box on the table.

All this time Nancy Brown, enthroned in the largest and most comfortable chair in the room, was being waited on like a small queen.

Her curls had curled closer from the dampness; her little feet on the brass fender were drying comfortably and the uneasy thought of how she was to explain things to Miss Helen Campbell was stowed away somewhere in the back of her mind.

“Here’s to our host, whoever he is,” exclaimed Edward, raising his cup of tea and then putting it to his lips. “Whoever he is, may he be granted peace and prosperity for his unconscious hospitality.”

“And how do we know it’s a man?” demanded Nancy.

“Because there’s not a trace of femininity in the whole room,” said Edward. “There are pipes and tobacco jars and a box of cigars. Here are some scientific magazines and books,—do you think any woman would read those?”

“There’s a boy here,” put in another student, holding up a rubber ball in one hand and a book of fairy tales in the other.

“Wouldn’t a girl play with a ball and read fairy tales?” asked Nancy, feeling that she must stand up for the rights of her sex even in the matter of games and books.

“Oh, of course. But she wouldn’t play with lead soldiers, would she?” asked Bixby, displaying a small toy soldier he had found on the floor.

“Marvelous! Marvelous!” said Bulger. “And now, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, what other facts do you gather from this slight evidence?”

“I should say, my dear Watson,” answered Bixby, pulling a cap over his eyes and folding his arms, “that the owner of the villa was of small stature. I judge that from the size of his foot.” He held up a man’s bedroom slipper that he had drawn from under Nancy’s chair. It was indeed hardly larger than a boy’s slipper. “He is a widower with one son. He lives abroad most of the time and comes to Oxford in the spring because he loves nature; so much so that he goes out walking and forgets to notice what the weather is. He is a man of studious habits because he has a student’s lamp and slippers ready for comfort the instant night drops her sable curtain. He is a small, amiable character, hospitable, as we can testify, with refreshment ready for all chance guests from one to eight or nine. He is agreeable——”

“How do you know that?”

“His house—his house, my dear Watson. Can’t you see that only a person of an amiable, trusting nature would go out and leave every door and window stretched wide? We will picture to ourselves, then, the hospitable owner of this villa as a small, dapper, wholesome gentleman with an amiable heart and a gentle nature——”

A heavy step was heard in the hall; a shadow darkened the doorway and a shrill strident voice exclaimed:

“Well, I never!”

Instantly nine pairs of eyes were focused in the same direction. There were nine simultaneous exclamations of one sort or another. Polly stifled a laugh. Nancy cried “Oh!” Edward Bacon was heard to say in a deep basso: “CÆsar’s ghost!”

There entered the room a female person of tremendous size and proportions. Only one woman in the world could be as huge as that. Nancy looked at her face closely and shrank back in her chair. It was Felicia Rivers.

She was dripping wet. Streams of water ran down her ample sides and she shook herself like a sea lion, scattering the moisture about her in every direction.

“You are the Master’s friends, young gentlemen, I suppose?” she observed.

“We hope so,” answered Edward Bacon, somewhat doubtfully.

“And where is the master?”

“Held up by the shower, I suppose. We came in and helped ourselves, you see. We were in the worst of it, and this young lady was so cold.”

If Felicia Rivers recalled Nancy, she made no sign of any recognition. Indeed, she only gave the young girl a passing glance.

“I am the new housekeeper,” she announced.

“Have a cup of tea?” suggested Edward.

“It would be most grateful, young gentlemen. I’m that wet and tired. I hope I may never take another railway journey. London’s the place for me, gentlemen. I ain’t the one to make excursions to the country. I’m a very ‘ospitable person an’ I likes my own home, an’ a very nice ‘ome it is, young sirs; Jetson Terrace—large, light an’ airy rooms; good service and candles prowided.”

Nancy stifled a laugh when she recalled Miss Felicia Rivers’ lodging house. She seemed to see the great creature again sitting before the kitchen fire eating sausages and buttered toast while she murmured: “Large, light and airy rooms; good service; candles prowided.”

Miss Rivers sat down and sipped her tea comfortably.

One of the students glanced uneasily out of the window.

“The rain is over. We had better be going,” he said.

“Will you thank your master for us, please, and tell him we enjoyed his hospitality and the shelter of his home in the storm?” Edward remarked politely to the housekeeper.

“Since you are such friends of the masters, young sirs,” said Miss Rivers, “you must be on the right side.” She paused and looked at them inquiringly.

“We trust so,” replied Edward.

“Maybe, then, you’d take interest in the bit of news I’ve brought with me down from London,” continued the woman, a crafty look in her small fishy eyes that Nancy seemed to remember as if she had seen it only yesterday.

“We would, of course,” said Edward.

“Then, come close to me and I’ll tell ye,” whispered the loquacious being, who, it was plain, was bursting with her news. “Tweedledum is in a great rage and no mistakes, and he’s going to Ireland.”

Only Nancy did not smile at this piece of interesting information.

“Indeed,” said Edward Bacon, “how very interesting. We must be going. Don’t disturb yourself, Madam, we’ll just leave the way we came in, by the open front door. Good day.”

They hastened from the villa just as the last rays of the setting sun gleamed through a bank of clouds.

“Mad as a March hare,” Nancy heard one of the students say.

“She has fatty degeneration of the brain, I suppose,” said another.

Then they all laughed.

“It was a jolly good joke on us, just the same, to excite our curiosity and tell us that Tweedledum had gone to Ireland! By Jove, but that’s a thrilling bit of news,” exclaimed Edward Bacon.

They turned over the boat to drain it out, and once more embarked on the little river.

Nancy had gradually become very weary of her eight cavaliers. She yearned infinitely to be back with Miss Campbell and her friends. With sad and tearful eyes she gazed on the ruins of her pink hat.

“I’ve been wicked,—I’ve been wicked! Will they ever forgive me?” she thought, while two hot tears rolled down her cheeks and fell on the rumpled folds of her damp dress.

“Don’t cry,” whispered the student sitting beside her in the stern of the boat. “There are lots of hat stores in Oxford. Can’t it be furbished up a bit?” He pointed to the crushed mass of pink.

“It isn’t the hat,—at least not entirely,” sobbed Nancy. “It’s because I went off like this without leaving word and with so many strange b-boys.”

“But we aren’t altogether strange, you see, because several of us know Peppercorn and the Paxtons,” the young man assured her.

As the boat skimmed over the waters back toward Oxford and Nancy saw the towers of St. Magdalen’s glistening in the sunshine, she began to feel more and more uncomfortable and wretched. Perhaps Miss Campbell would send her back to America with a note to her mother and father that she could not be responsible for a girl like Nancy. She would lose her three friends, Billie and Elinor and Mary. She would not visit the castle in Ireland, nor see Maria again, and then—there was her best hat,—ruined—utterly ruined. She choked down her sobs. She must command herself before all these strangers. Dipping her handkerchief into the water, she dabbled her eyes pathetically.

“I’m afraid you’ll think American girls are dreadful cry babies,” she said, “but, you see, I know I’ve done wrong and I can’t think of any explanation or excuse.”

The eight young men were deeply sympathetic. Nancy weeping was quite as fascinating to them as Nancy smiling and demure.

“Never regret the past. Think only of the future,” observed a cadaverous-looking student regarding Nancy through the double lenses of a pair of large spectacles like a quizzical owl.

Nancy gazed at him doubtfully.

“I’m trying to think of the future,” she answered. “That’s why I’m unhappy.”

“Could any one have the heart to scold you?” asked the spectacled student.

She did not reply, but her heart remained decidedly unquiet and troubled, and she desired earnestly to make the confession and take the medicine, whatever it was to be. At least she would have something interesting to tell them: Felicia Rivers and that queer thing about Tweedledum.

However, like half the world, Nancy was very apt to magnify her troubles. Nothing could exceed her misery when she hastened up High Street half an hour later with her escort of eight. At the hotel she found that her friends had not returned. Why should she have imagined that she was the only person who had been caught in the rain that afternoon? After eight friendly handshakes and a sad little smile for eight at once, she hurried to her room. Now that they had not missed her, it would be much easier to confess her sins. At last they burst into the apartment as bedraggled and damp as she herself had been, but bearing a bit of information which the newsboys had been calling out for some time in the street below, although Nancy had been too occupied to notice what they were saying.

“Nancy, what do you think has happened?” cried Billie, rushing to her friend, without so much as inquiring about the two exciting hours which had intervened between this and their last meeting. “Little Arthur, the Duke of Kilkenty’s youngest son—do you remember, Nancy—our little Arthur,—has been kidnapped? Now, what do you think of that for a thrilling piece of news?”

“But who kidnapped him?” demanded Nancy childishly.

“How under the sun do we know?” answered Billie.

“I suppose the Duke has lots of enemies. He is a very cruel man,” observed Mary.

“Where’s Feargus?” asked Nancy suddenly.

“He’s below. We saw him as we came in, reading the paper. But where have you been, you naughty Nancy-Bell?”

Nancy slipped her arms around Miss Campbell’s neck.

“Will you promise not to scold me if I tell you beforehand that I’m sorry if I’ve been wicked, and I’ll never, never do such a thing again?” she asked in her most beguiling tones.

Miss Campbell was not proof against such coaxing as this.

“Of course, you sweet child,” she answered. “And I believe you are genuinely sorry. I see you’ve been weeping.”

Then Nancy related the adventures of the afternoon.

“You see they knew the two Paxtons and Timothy Peppercorn and they were Oxford students and so nice——”

“Eight of them at once?” exclaimed her friends.

Nancy nodded and blushed.

“Why, you must have looked like Queen Elizabeth sailing down the Thames in her royal barge with all her courtiers,” laughed Mary Price.

“But the most interesting part is yet to come,” continued Nancy. She had saved the tid-bit of Felicia Rivers and Tweedledum till the last. “Isn’t it the queerest thing?” she said when she had finished.

“It might be, or it might not be, just as it happens,” answered Miss Campbell. “Felicia Rivers may have obtained a position as housekeeper. They do say that most of the lodging-house keepers in London were formerly housekeepers. But I wonder at any one’s engaging a great creature like that to look after his house.”

“And you won’t write home to mother and father that I have been naughty?” asked Nancy, embracing Miss Campbell.

“No, child, I won’t even scold this time. I strongly suspect that the ruin of your best hat was punishment enough.”

That night the Motor Maids had a serenade. A chorus of eight robust voices sang beneath their windows to an accompaniment of banjos and guitars. It began with “Nancy Lee” and the chorus of “Yo-ho-ho’s” nearly rocked the old building on its ancient foundations; and it ended with “The Moon Is Rising Slow, My Love,” sung with so much feeling and such wistful cadences that the four young girls kneeling at the windows, wrapped in shawls and dressing-gowns, shook with suppressed laughter. One of them blushed at the disquieting thought that eight hearts could be beating for her own self in unison.

The next morning Miss Campbell and the Motor Maids achieved a triumphal departure from the ancient city of learning. Eleven students of the Universities of Oxford gathered in front of the hotel and waved them a last farewell.