It was Miss Sabrina's that weakened! The tenseness was broken when she rose hurriedly from her chair. "Then it's on your own head, B'lindy Guest," she cried shrilly, "I've done my duty as I saw it! She's better left alone." B'lindy, triumphant, threw after her, with a snort; "Duty's duty and _I_ know that's well as you, but I guess no one's tried the perscription of happiness for Milly Leavitt and mebbe it ain't too late!" Nancy was torn between a wild desire to hug B'lindy and to say a nice word to Aunt Sabrina, departing majestically from the room. But she did neither--for both women, at that moment, looked very forbidding. Instead, as the door closed behind Miss Sabrina, she drew a long breath. "Suspended sentence," she said, solemnly. Then, at B'lindy's "What's that?" she laughed back: "The victor's wreath shall adorn your brow, my worthy ally. While you prepare the chariot I shall make haste to tell Aunt Milly that all's well with the world! _Don't_ look at me like that, B'lindy Guest, I'm not crazy--yet!" But B'lindy "'lowed" she was, for Nancy seized her by the shoulders and kissed first one cheek and then the other, and uttered the perfectly incomprehensible--to B'lindy--remark; "Webb was right!" CHAPTER IX DAVY'S CLUB "The next thing we do is to s'lute the flag of our country. Now, one, two, three--after me!" The shrill command floated up to Nancy in her tree-top. She had just snuggled back against her seat with a long sigh of contentment. The door of her treasure-box stood open and beside her were the sheets of her neglected manuscript. She had stolen out for an hour's uninterrupted work. "How _heavenly_ quiet," she had been saying to the rustling leaves. "_Now_ I am going to work and make up for lost time." Everything at Happy House seemed to be back on what Nancy called a "peace-basis." "I must go down to the village and tell Webb what a dear he was to make this seat," she had thought, as she climbed into it. Then, just as her inspired pencil had written "Act 4" across the top of a clean sheet, had come the strange words, seemingly out of nowhere. "Well, I _never_!" Nancy peeped all around. The sound came apparently from under the cliff. "Who _is_ it? And how could _anyone_ get there." The voice--a boy's--was rattling on in a succession of sharp commands. Nancy crept toward the edge and peeped over. There, to her amazement, on a strip of sand beach in an indentation of the shore, marched and counter-marched a small boy, quite alone. He was a funny, snub-nosed, tousled headed boy in ragged blouse and blue jeans--and, clearly, very much in earnest, for a deep scowl wrinkled his freckled face. "At-ten-shun! Shoulder arms--right face--forward, march." Three feet length of bare-footed manliness stepped briskly across the sand. "Step up, you Dick Snead," and a domineering arm swept out toward an imaginary lagger in the rear.