Miss Blake took her up quickly. "I know it is not. And now we must set to work at once to get you properly provided, for you are old enough now to 'care,' not necessarily about styles, but certainly about making a creditable appearance, and I want you to have a suitable wardrobe so that you may always keep yourself tidy." It seemed to Nan that the wardrobe Miss Blake proceeded to provide for her was something more than merely "tidy." The frocks were simple, it is true, but very dainty and tasteful, and in her new interest in them and the way they were made she quite forgot to complain at the extra inch or two which the governess caused to be added to the length of the skirts. There had been some stormy scenes when the winter dresses were being made, Nan insisting that she would not wear "such horrid dangling things that were forever getting in her way." She wanted her skirts made short, and if she couldn't have her skirts made short, etc. The skirts had not been made short, and these were even longer. Clad in them Nan looked very tall and womanly, and Delia realized for the first time that her "baby" had ceased to be a little girl. So at last the preparations were completed and the girl started off to spend a fortnight with Ruth at the Andrews' beautiful summer home by the sea. Then came gay times. Early morning dips in the surf; clam-bakes on the beach; long, lazy hours spent on the veranda, when the day was too warm for exercise, and when it was cooler, fine spins along the hard, white sand, for miles beside the shimmering sea. Nan grew as brown as an Indian, for she scorned shade-hats, and oftenest had nothing on her head at all but her own thick thatch of riotous brown hair. Ruth's brother taught Nan to swim, and she entered into it with so much zest that to his surprise he found his only difficulty lay in trying to restrain her. Nothing seemed to daunt her, and whatever any one else did she immediately wanted to try. "The fact of the matter is," young Mr. Andrews declared one day, "you ought to have been a boy. You'd make a capital fellow." "I know it," admitted Nan, frankly. "I love boys' sports and pranks, and to think that all my life I've just got to 'sit on a cushion and sew up a seam.' It's perfectly awful." "Fancy!" exclaimed Miss Webster, a fellow-guest, and a young lady whom, by the way, Nan regarded with a good deal of disdain, because she seemed what John Gardiner called "girly-girly," and was flirtatious. "Fancy! Why, I wouldn't be a man for anything in the world! Just think what hideous clothes they wear." "Thank you, Miss Webster," retorted Mr. Andrews with mock solemnity. "Oh, I didn't mean you," she returned with an emphasis and a soft glance of the eyes. "You really dress extremely well. I adore your neck-ties and your boots are dreams."