"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!"