"Well, you can count on me," cried Nan, flinging her arm about her friend's waist and escorting her to the door. "Good-bye! Thanks heaps for asking me! Las' tag!" The front door slammed, and the girl came back to the library with her cheeks aglow and her eyes flashing. "What fun!" she exclaimed. "I know what we'll do! We'll go down to Howe's and have a supper and a jolly good time generally. Mary Brewster and Grace and Ruth had it all planned out for the next good snow, and I'd forgotten. O goody!" Miss Blake was standing as they had left her, by the fire, with her foot upon the fender and her hand upon the high mantel-shelf. Now she took them both down and turned to Nan, saying in a low, controlled voice: "Nan, I want to talk to you about this party. And you must hear me out, even if some of the things I am about to say do not please you." She kept her eyes on the girl's face as she spoke, and saw its expression change quickly from one of eager anticipation to one of growing apprehension and then again to one of dogged opposition. So vivid were these changes that she almost lost the necessary courage to go on, for she read in them that her task promised to be no easy one. "Well?" said Nan, tapping her foot impatiently, as Miss Blake did not at once continue. "Please sit down here, and I will try to say what I have to say as quickly as possible," resumed the governess, drawing a long breath. Nan obeyed, but with a decidedly impatient fling of herself upon the low ottoman Miss Blake had indicated. "As I said to Ruth," the low voice commenced, "under almost any other circumstances it would give me the greatest pleasure to know that you were to enjoy this sleighing party with the others. If Mrs. Andrews or Mrs. Hawes were going it would settle the question at once." "Or if you were," suggested Nan, with a curl other lip. Miss Blake's face paled, and for an instant she regarded Nan in a sort of surprised, hurt silence. Then she replied, steadily: "Yes, or if I were. But as it is Mrs. Cole, the case is entirely altered. Mrs. Cole is scarcely more than a girl herself, and--I say this to you, Nan, simply because I must--she has never been, to my idea, a lady-like young woman. She has always been flippant and frivolous and boisterous; anything but a good companion for a number of impulsive, impressionable girls like yourself." "Oh, pshaw!" interrupted Nan, impatiently. "There's nothing against her at all. She's lots of fun, and a body'd be a great goose that tried to suit all the old frumps in town. She said so herself, and she's married and she knows." A ghost of a smile flitted across Miss Blake's face. Nan's emphasis reflected so directly on her own condition of unauthoritative spinsterhood.