Nan Sherwoods Winter Holidays

Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays

The Project Gutenberg eBook, Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays, by
Annie Roe Carr
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Title: Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays
Author: Annie Roe Carr
Release Date: June 13, 2004 [eBook #12610]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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SHERWOOD'S WINTER HOLIDAYS***
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NAN SHERWOOD'S WINTER HOLIDAYS
Or, Rescuing the Runaways

by
ANNIE ROE CARR
1916
CHAPTER I
DOWN PENDRAGON HILL
Ta-ra! ta-ra! ta-ra-ra-ra! ta-_rat!_
Professor Krenner took the silver bugle from his lips while the strain
echoed flatly from the opposite, wooded hill. That hill was the Isle of
Hope, a small island of a single eminence lying half a mile off the
mainland, and not far north of Freeling.
The shore of Lake Huron was sheathed in ice. It was almost Christmas
time. Winter had for some weeks held this part of Michigan in an iron
grip. The girls of Lakeview Hall were tasting all the joys of winter
sports.
The cove at the boathouse (this was the building that some of the
Lakeview Hall girls had once believed haunted) was now a smooth,
well-scraped skating pond. Between the foot of the hill, on the brow of
which the professor stood, and the Isle of Hope, the strait was likewise
solidly frozen. The bobsled course was down the hill and across the icy
track to the shore of the island.
Again the professor of mathematics--and architectural drawing--put the
key-bugle to his lips and sent the blast echoing over the white waste:
Ta-ra! ta-ra! ta-ra-ra-ra! ta-_rat!_
The road from Lakeview Hall was winding, and only a short stretch of
it could be seen from the brow of Pendragon Hill. But the roof and
chimneys of the great castle-like Hall were visible above the tree-tops.

Now voices were audible--laughing, sweet, clear, girls' voices, ringing
like a chime of silver bells, as the owners came along the well-beaten
path, and suddenly appeared around an arbor-vitae clump.
"Here they are!" announced the professor, whose red and white
toboggan-cap looked very jaunty, indeed. He told of the girls' arrival to
a boy who was toiling up the edge of the packed and icy slide. Walter
Mason had been to the bottom of the hill to make sure that no obstacle
had fallen upon the track since the previous day.
"Walter! Hello, Walter!" was the chorused shout of the leading group
of girls, as the boy reached the elevation where the professor stood.
One of the girls ran to meet him, her cheeks aglow, her lips smiling,
and her brown eyes dancing. She looked so much like the boy that there
could be no doubt of their relationship.
"Hello, Grace!" Walter called to his sister, in response.
But his gaze went past the chubby figure of his shy sister to another girl
who, with her chum, was in the lead of the four tugging at the rope of
the gaily painted bobsled. This particular girl's bright and animated
countenance smiled back at Walter cordially, and she waved a mittened
hand.
"Hi, Walter!" she called.
"Hi, Nan!" was his reply.
The others he welcomed with a genial hail. Bess Harley, who toiled
along beside her chum, said with a flashing smile and an imp-light of
naughtiness in either black eye:
"You and Walter Mason are just as thick as leaves on a mulberry tree,
Nan Sherwood! I saw you whispering together the other day when
Walter came with his cutter to take Grace for a ride. Is he going to take
you for a spin behind that jolly black horse of his?"

"No, honey," replied Nan, placidly. "And I wouldn't go without you,
you know very well."
"Oh! wouldn't you, Nan? Not even with Walter?"
"Certainly not!" cried Nan Sherwood, big-eyed at the suggestion.
"Only because Dr. Beulah wouldn't hear of such an escapade, I guess,"
said the wicked Bess, laughing.
"Now! just for that," Nan declared, pretending to be angry, "I won't tell
you--yet--what we were talking about."
"You and Walter?"
"Walter and I--yes."
"Secrets from your chum, Nan! You're always having something on the
side that you don't tell me," pouted Bess.
"Nonsense! Don't you know Christmas is coming and everybody has
secrets this time of year?"
"Hurry up, girls!" commanded the red-haired girl who was helping pull
on the rope directly behind the chums. "I'm walking on your heels. It
will be night before we get on the slide."
"We're in the lead," Bess