NAN SHERWOOD’S SUMMER HOLIDAYS

BY ANNIE ROE CARR

THE WORLD SYNDICATE PUBLISHING COMPANY CLEVELAND NEW YORK

Published 1937 by The World Syndicate Publishing Co.

Printed in the United States of America

NAN SHERWOOD’S SUMMER HOLIDAYS

CHAPTER I NEW YEAR’S EVE

“I just can’t believe it’s true! I’ve pinched myself a dozen times. I’ve pulled my own hair. I’ve looked at myself in the mirror again and again and told myself that it is a fact, that I am I, Nan Sherwood of Tillbury, United States of America and student of Lakeview Hall, and that I am going to sail away next spring to Scotland to visit—”

The end of the sentence was lost in a muffle as Nan pulled off the simple silk frock she had been wearing.

Bess Harley, her closest friend since primary school days, finished it.

“Emberon, the home of your mother’s ancestors.” Her voice sounded unusually heavy. Nan looked around and immediately was all contrition, for Bess’s eyes were full of tears.

“Why, Bess, darling, forgive me. I’m nothing but a thoughtless old meany.” So saying, she[2] wiped Bess’s tears away and sat down beside her.

Bess caught her lip between her teeth and shook her head as she fought for self-control. “I’m just an old silly myself,” she half apologized. “But I can hardly bear the thought of your going so far away from all of us for a whole summer. And it’s true you are going, Nan, as true as the fact that Walter Mason cut in on more than half your dances tonight.”

With this jibe, Bess’ eyes twinkled, and she felt better.

Nan blushed. “Oh, Bess, was it really so bad? I told him not to, but he said he was under orders to see that I didn’t get into any more scrapes.”

Bess laughed. “You dear! Of course, it was all right. We all danced with him—for a few seconds at least.”

Nan looked somewhat unconvinced. Walter, she felt, was paying her rather special attention these days and because she did like him, she hardly knew whether to be pleased or angry. She succeeded only in being embarrassed.

Now, a knock diverted her thoughts. She jumped up, but before she could open the door, two of her other companions at Lakeview Hall entered.

“May we come in?” It was pretty little Grace Mason speaking. After her followed Rhoda Hammond,[3] her dark eyes sparkling with excitement.

“Oh, Grace, it was such a nice party!” Nan exclaimed enthusiastically as she placed chairs for the two visitors. “Your mother and dad are perfect peaches to have us all here tonight.”

Grace smiled shyly. “It was fun for me, too. Do you know, I’ve never before stayed up to watch the old year out and the New Year in! It’s my first New Year’s party.”

“And we’ll always remember it, too,” Rhoda chimed in. Then she looked rather sad, for it was the first time she had ever spent the holiday away from her pretty blind mother, her dad, and Rose Ranch.

“Yes,” it was curly headed Bess speaking now. “We will. Would you believe it? Tonight when I stood down there near the big windows, looking out across the room, and saw you all with dishes of ice cream in your hands, the clock chimed out eleven-thirty and I felt as though Mrs. Cupp should come in, clap her hands, and tell us all to report to Dr. Prescott’s office tomorrow. That’s almost always happened, you know, when we have had a really good spread at school.”

The girls laughed merrily. They had pictures in their minds of everybody at the party dropping their dishes and scurrying away at the appearance of Mrs. Cupp.[4]

“If you feel too guilty,” Nan looked across at Bess, “I’ll tell Dr. Beulah when we get back to Lakeview next Wednesday. Perhaps she can be persuaded to impose the silent treatment on you.”

“Oh, Nan,” Bess laughed, “Remember the time she did that to you and I tried so hard to make you talk. It was so dull having a roommate who did nothing but shake her head when I opened my mouth and let out words of wisdom.”

“I don’t remember,” Nan tried to keep her face straight as she made the statement and then paused before she added—“the words of wisdom.”

The girls all laughed. Then there was silence as each one thought of all the good times they had had in the past years. It was Grace who spoke first.

“Mother will be in before long, I’m afraid,” she said, “to tell us that we must go to bed. Nan, before she does, tell us more about your going to Europe. Just imagine—”

“Please, Grace,” Nan interrupted her friend. “I’m sorry, but I can’t tell you anything more tonight.”

With this, all the girls looked more questioning than ever and Rhoda protested, “But Nan, you can’t be mysterious about a trip abroad. We simply couldn’t stand it!” This was unusual coming[5] from the generally quiet Rhoda and for a moment they all looked at her. Her face flushed slightly. The words sounded strange even to her. Could she be forgetting those southern manners that always made her so mindful of others’ feelings? Now, as she saw the expression on Nan’s face and then looked at Bess, she guessed at Nan’s reasons for wishing to delay talk of the European trip. With her usual tact, she changed the subject entirely.

“Have any of you made any New Year’s resolutions?” she asked.

Almost as quick as Rhoda to sense the reason for Nan’s unwillingness to talk, Grace answered the question.

“I’ve thought of a million things I ought to resolve to do, but it’s so discouraging. I never seem to be able to keep any of my resolutions.”

Nan smiled her thanks to both of the girls, and then turned to Bess. “There’s one resolution we all ought to make,” she said.

“What’s that?” Bess asked as she tried to guess what fault they all had in common.

“To be nicer to Linda Riggs when we go back to school.”

“Nicer to Linda Riggs!” Bess exploded. “Why, if I make any resolution at all about that girl, it will be to utterly ignore her when I get back![6] Nicer to Linda Riggs! Why, Nan Sherwood, and after all she has done to you! If I had her here this minute I’d like to slap her snobbish face. Just because her father happens to own a railroad, she thinks that she owns the world.”

“Why, Bess!” Nan exclaimed. “Be quiet! There’s no point in your talking that way about her, no matter what she does. If you don’t keep quiet, I’ll think you are as bad as she.”

“Maybe so,” Bess half admitted. “Just the same, I wish she wasn’t coming back to school at all. I don’t think she should be allowed to after causing that explosion. She might have killed us all.”

Nan nodded her head at this last. It was true that Linda had done a very risky thing in meddling with the steam valve in the basement of the school.

“Yes, but even so, I’m going to be nicer to her in the spring term,” Nan resolved. “Maybe she has some good qualities we don’t know about.”

“Nan means,” Rhoda interpreted, “that there is some good in all of us. Perhaps she is right. Perhaps Linda has never been given a chance.”

Bess snorted very inelegantly. “You can all turn the other cheek if you want to,” she insisted, “but I’m not going to. She’s just a mean hateful old thing, and I don’t care what you think, Nan. I’m[7] going to watch her. You had better do it too, if you’re going to live to go to Europe.”

At this, Grace giggled. “Nan could live through almost anything, I believe,” she said. “Mama says she never knew a girl who at Nan’s age had had so many adventures and had come up so smiling from all of them. Dad agrees. He thinks Nan has a charmed life, that she has at least nine lives—”

“Like a cat?” Nan interrupted, for she was embarrassed at this praise of herself. Now, her eyes twinkled as the girls all laughed. Nan was really a charming girl. Her clear brown eyes were frank and trusting. Her brown, bobbed hair, cut in a wind-blown style and brushed so that it shone and looked soft and silky, gave her an almost boyish appearance. But her quick sympathy, her readiness to help anyone in distress, and her fondness for children made a real girl of her. Everyone liked her, but Bess Harley liked her most of all.

Bess was a pretty girl with curly hair. Though indulgent parents had spoiled her so that she was inclined to over-value the luxuries money could buy, her constant association with Nan through the years had somewhat remedied that. However, this New Year’s Eve, she did feel out of sorts. The thought of being separated from Nan was still new to her. Moreover, she was envious. She[8] had heard some place that Linda Riggs was going to spend the summer in Europe, and she did not want Linda to go any place that she couldn’t go. Now, as she sat quietly, after expressing herself on the matter of that overly proud young person, she was really thinking of ways and means of persuading her parents to let her go to Europe, too.

“Anyway,” Grace brought the girls back to the subject of Linda, “maybe Nan is right. So, I hereby resolve,” she said solemnly, “to be nice to Linda Riggs for one whole month, the month of January. During that time, I will not say one mean thing to her.”

“Bravo!” Nan applauded. “And you, Rhoda?”

But it was not Linda Riggs that troubled the pretty southern girl. She had really never had any direct contact with her. So when Nan turned to her, she began, “Well, Linda doesn’t really annoy me. I simply overlook her. But there is something else that does bother me. You all know that when I first came to Lakeview Hall, it was hard for me to fit into your way of doing things.”

The girls nodded their heads sympathetically. Rhoda had stood apart from them for some weeks after her arrival but they had forgiven her for her apparent misunderstanding of them. They had long before forgotten that she had been a[9] “poor sport” at the hazing when she first entered Lakeview. Now Rhoda herself brought it back to mind.

“I simply couldn’t understand your way of making me welcome when I came north,” she said in her own soft southern drawl. “I puzzled about it for a long time, sure all the while that you were wrong and I was right!”

Nan caught her eye and smiled. “We were mean, weren’t we?” she admitted.

“Oh, Nan, it wasn’t you,” the loyal Bess interposed. “You tried to make everything easier for Rhoda, but we simply wouldn’t help you. Why, I believe we were jealous,” she ended as though the idea was an entirely new one. “Girls, remember how Rhoda looked the first time we ever saw her?”

They all nodded.

“You were lovely,” she went on speaking directly to Rhoda.

Rhoda blushed slightly at the frank praise, but Bess paid no heed. “You were dressed in the most perfect brown hat and coat I’ve ever seen,” she continued. “I’ll never forget it.”

“Nor will I,” Rhoda ruefully agreed. “I have never in my life felt so strange and so entirely alone. You were all talking among yourselves and having a grand time. Everyone seemed to[10] know everyone else. I was such an outsider! And when Laura Polk addressed me as Rollicking Rhoda from Rustlers’ Roost, the wild Western adventuress that you had heard so much about, I wished that the floor would open wide and swallow me.

“Since it didn’t, I wanted to turn and run, run as fast as I could back to Rose Ranch and the people I knew. Have you ever felt like that?”

“Many, many times,” Grace agreed heartily. “I’ve wanted to run when I flunked in recitations before the whole class. I’ve wanted to go away and hide just dozens of times when things went wrong. I can hardly bear it when Mrs. Cupp tells me before everyone that Dr. Beulah wants to see me.”

“Especially when Linda Riggs is there and hears it and looks as though she was the most perfect person in the world,” Bess chimed in. “Sometimes, when I see her looking that way when you people have to go to the office, I feel as though I’d like to tell all I know about her.”

At a warning look from Nan, Bess subsided. Nan patted Grace on the shoulder. “You mustn’t take those things too seriously,” she said. “We all feel that way.”

“But you just can’t help yourself,” Rhoda continued. “My mother has always tried to teach me[11] to have poise, but generally, when I feel as I did that night, I forget everything she has ever said, and I act like such a fool. I feel miserable afterwards, because I know how disappointed she would be.

“Now, I want to resolve to be a good sport, no matter what happens. I want to remember to stand my ground and not run just because things seem to be unpleasant.”

The girls were silent for a moment after this. Rhoda was so utterly sincere that they realized for the first time how unhappy she must have been in the days after her hazing, when for so long they ignored her.

“Well, I declare,” the cheery voice of Grace’s mother broke in on the silence. “A good old fashioned round table, I do believe!” She had entered the room quietly and now stood alone near the doorway. “I hate to send you all off to bed, but it really is getting late. Tomorrow you must all be up early, pack, and catch that early train for Lakeview. I promised Dr. Prescott on my word of honor that I’d have you all back to school on time.”

At this, the girls got up, wished one another and Mrs. Mason a Happy New Year, and then prepared for bed.

“It has been a happy, happy day,” each one[12] thought as she pulled the covers up over her shoulders and fell off to sleep. It was only Nan who lay awake. She was thinking of her trip and wondering what lay before her. But had the others been able to see into the future, they, too, would have lain awake thinking, and planning, and hoping.

[13]

CHAPTER II SECRETS

“Where’s Nan?” Rhoda whispered as she stuck her head into Bess and Nan’s room at Lakeview Hall.

Bess got up from the gayly covered studio couch where she had been reading and opened wide the door. “It’s all right. Come on in,” she invited. “Nan’s gone away for the afternoon, down to old Mrs. Bagley’s to see how she’s getting along.”

“How did you manage?” Rhoda asked as she pulled off her pretty brown sports coat. “Do you think she smells a plot.”

“Oh, I don’t think so. She’s been intending to go down there for some time, and today was the first free time she has had. I’m sure she doesn’t suspect, but we will have to be careful.”

“I know it! Nan’s so smart that she will catch on in a minute if we make her suspicious at all.” Rhoda lowered her voice to a whisper as someone passed by the door. “When are the others coming?” she asked when the footsteps had died away.[14]

“They’ll be here any time now,” Bess answered. “I can hardly wait, can you? I’m so anxious to get things started.”

Rhoda nodded as she peered out of the double windows near her to see if she could sight her friends coming up the long hill from the village.

“Anyone coming, Sister Anne?” Bess laughed.

Rhoda grinned. “Do you always feel like the sister of Bluebeard’s wife, too, when you keep watching for someone?” she asked.

“Always. For some reason, that gory fairy tale and Cinderella were my favorites when I was a kid.”

“I liked them, too,” Rhoda agreed, “but they weren’t my favorites, not by any means. I was brought up on stories of buried treasure, tales that have been handed down from generation to generation till no one knows whether they are true or false.”

Rhoda’s eyes were alight as she spoke, and her face had a far away look on it. She was recalling the tales an old Spanish maid had regaled her with as a child. They were tales of bloody massacres, of hidden treasure, of gold and silver and rubies and sapphires locked in heavy Spanish chests and concealed in caves, of lost mines, richer than any man has ever remembered, of wandering tribes who knew the answers but would never[15] tell lest the wrath of God descend upon them and wipe them all away.

She sighed softly.

Bess sat quietly, waiting and hoping that Rhoda would talk more. But the girl was silent, as she once more looked down the hill. “You’re expecting Grace Mason, Procrastination Boggs, and Laura Polk, aren’t you?” she asked.

“Yes, they’ve been the closest friends Nan has had here,” Bess returned. “So I asked them all.”

Bess was right. They were Nan’s closest friends, as anyone who has read the complete Nan Sherwood series knows. Of all the girls, Bess is the only one who has been with Nan since the beginning. She made her appearance in the very first volume of the series, “Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp, or the Old Lumberman’s Secret.” This volume opens with Nan living happily on Amity Street in Tillbury with her mother and dad.

She goes to Tillbury High School, enjoys sports, makes good grades, and is popular with her classmates. Her only real regret, which she carefully conceals from her parents, is the knowledge that she cannot afford to accompany Bess Harley to Lakeview Hall where they had both always hoped to go together. Suddenly Papa Sherwood loses his job and Mama inherits a fortune[16] in Scotland that makes it necessary for the two to cross the ocean, leaving Nan behind. The plucky young girl then accompanies her uncle, a bluff, hearty lumberman, to Northern Michigan. There in a series of adventures that follow one on the other in swift succession, Nan clears up the mystery surrounding her uncle’s title to a valuable piece of property and wins the admiration of all whom she meets.

In “Nan Sherwood at Lakeview Hall or the Mystery of the Haunted Boathouse,” the two girls arrive at the big boarding school on the bluff overlooking Lake Huron and immediately find themselves in trouble with Laura Riggs. In chapter after chapter of fun and excitement and thrills galore we see the two girls at school. Constantly getting in and out of difficulties themselves, they involve their new friends, Grace Mason, whose acquaintance you have already made in this book, Laura Polk, a lively red-headed girl with a vivid imagination, and Amelia “Procrastination” Boggs, a serious soul with a roomful of clocks. But perhaps the principal character is a ghost that nearly does away with Mrs. Cupp, the stern watchful assistant of Dr. Beulah Prescott, the school’s principal. Nan meets the ghost and conquers it with some help from Walter Mason, Grace’s brother, amid much mystery and much trouble.[17]

This over, the Masons invite Nan and her friends to spend the Christmas holidays with them in Chicago. So, in “Nan Sherwood’s Winter Holidays or Rescuing the Runaways” we see her continuing her adventures in the biggest city she has ever visited. How she makes friends with a famous movie star and solves the mystery of the disappearance of two young farm girls who have come to the city to make their fortunes is told in this volume.

In her next big adventure, recounted in “Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch or The Old Mexican’s Treasure”, our heroine and her friends meet Rhoda Hammond a pretty, young westerner at school and accompany her to her home, a big ranch, for their vacation. What a vacation that is! A raid! An antelope hunt! A stampede! Lost treasure! And a pretty Mexican girl, Juanita! This is a volume brimming over with new experiences.

From Rose Ranch, Nan and her chums return once more to Lakeview to work and study. They do well, so when Mrs. Mason invites them all to accompany Grace and Walter to Florida, they have no trouble getting permission from home. In “Nan Sherwood at Palm Beach or Strange Adventures among the Orange Groves” they all have a part in solving poor old Mrs. Bagley’s troubles,[18] and Walter has cause to admire again the boundlessness of Nan’s pluck.

She is as generous as she is plucky, and so the Saturday afternoon on which this chapter opens, Nan is down in Freeling, the village below Lakeview Hall, working away in Mrs. Bagley’s cottage.