CHAPTER XVIII

THE FATEFUL EVENING DRAWS NEAR

Bess Harley had said the discussion of how to spend the five pound note was a serious matter; and when the conference was concluded and the two chums separated to attend different classes, Bess' countenance certainly looked very grave.

Nan was secretly amused at the way in which her friend had taken the suggestion as to the place at which the proposed feast should be held. The thought had come to Nan in a flash; but to carry the scheme through was to test the courage of some of her school friends.

Bess was too proud, after all, to refuse to meet the terms on which her chum agreed to give the banquet; but it was plain she thought the suggestion a risky one. So she carried a rather glum face to Mademoiselle's music class, while Nan sought Professor Krenner for--yes!--a lesson in architectural drawing.

Actually, Nan had taken up this elective study. She had demurely marked a cross against that study at first, in a spirit of mischief. She liked queer old Professor Krenner from the start; and she had threatened on the train coming up from Chicago, to become his pupil in the art which he admitted was his hobby. The professor was surprised nevertheless when Dr. Prescott passed Nan's name over to him without comment.

But once caught in the mesh of his own net, Professor Krenner was game. He put Nan down before him in the classroom, where the boards were for the most part covered with mathematical problems, and began to talk seriously, but in a popular strain, of form, color, and periods of architecture.

He was interested himself and he interested Nan. She took fire from his enthusiasm. He went to the board and illustrated his meaning with bold, rapid strokes of the chalk. He even erased problems and examples, in his eagerness to explain to an intelligent, youthful mind, ideas that he had long since evolved but had not put into words before.

"Hoity-toity!" he cried at last, in his odd, querulous way. "I've rubbed out half my work for to-morrow. Nancy Sherwood, you've bewitched me. You've set me talking on a theme I don't often touch. Now, are you satisfied?"

"I'm beginning to be just awfully interested," Nan declared, rising with a sigh. "Is the lesson over?"

"Ah! 'tis over," he growled, looking ruefully at his free-hand elevation of the Colosseum at Rome.

"And when do I come again?" asked Nan.

"Eh? And do you wish to continue this course?"

"I truly believe I'd like to see if I have a talent for architecture. I'm awfully interested. It's lots more entertaining than drawing butterflies and flowers. Can't a woman be an architect?"

"Hoity-toity! what's this?" asked the professor, and sat down again to stare at her.

"I really do like it, Professor," repeated Nan.

And from that time there dated a friendship between, and companionship of, Nan Sherwood and Professor Krenner that really made a great difference in both their lives.

Just now both chums from Tillbury were, immensely interested in the secret banquet to which twenty-five of their closest friends were to be invited. Nor was it a small task to select those two score and five out of a possible hundred--for, of course, the "primes," or lower-grade girls, were not considered at all.

And then, there was the possibility of some of the invited guests being unwilling to attend. They had to face that from the start.

"You know very well," said Bess, when she had digested Nan's idea for a day or two, and grown more accustomed to it--"You know very well that wild horses wouldn't drag May Winslow to the feast."

"Why not?"

"You know how she feels about that place."

"And she's one of the very girls I want there," cried Nan. "We want to kill superstition and have a grand feast at one fell swoop. It's all nonsense! Some of the little girls have got hold of the foolish stories that have been told and they are almost afraid to go to bed at night in their big dormitories with all the other girls about them. It's ridiculous!"

"Oh, dear me, Nan!" groaned her chum. "You're too, too bold!"

"It doesn't take much boldness to disbelieve such old-wives' fables."

"And your own eyesight, too?" suggested Bess, slily.

"I'll never admit I have seen anything either spiritual or spirituous," laughed Nan.

"But they say there are underground passages from the unfinished part of the Hall, down there."

"What were they for?"

"Maybe smugglers," replied Bess, big-eyed at her own thought.

"Well! I never!"

"Lots of smuggling about Freeling years ago. Henry says so," declared Bess, stoutly.

"Goodness! what have you been reading?" demanded Nan. "Dime novels, I do believe, Bess Harley!"

"Just wait!" said her chum, prophetically. "I'm afraid we'll get into trouble over this after all."

And she was quite right; but it was not at all the sort of trouble Bess expected.

The chums obtained permission to go down town shopping and they made arrangements with the caterer for the supper to be ready on a certain evening--salads, sandwiches, and cake in hampers; cream packed in ice; coffee and chocolate ready to warm on a stove which Nan knew would be in readiness; and plates, cups and saucers, knives and forks, and all other needfuls packed in proper containers, to be transported by water.

Nan had already bribed Henry; for the place where she was determined to have the banquet was in an unused part of the big boathouse, a sort of kitchen and dining room where there was a stove. Picnics had been held there before; but never at night. Many of the girls had declared they would not go there after dark because of the ghost. But Nan was determined to prick the bubble of that superstition. Where one girl would not go for fear of the supernatural, twenty-five would be afraid not to go because of the ridicule that would fall upon them.

Grace Mason and her roommate, the flaxen-haired Lillie Nevin, were among those who Bess had prophesied would not dare attend the banquet at the haunted boathouse. But Nan pleaded with them. She had to get Grace interested, for Nan desired to make use of Walter and his _Bargain Rush_. The caterer could not deliver the supper after dark at the Lakeview Hall boat landing; but Walter could, and gladly agreed to do so. It was his enthusiasm over the proposed party that encouraged Grace--and through her, Lillie--to promise to attend.

Nan went to May Winslow in a personal way, too. She showed May, who was one of the larger girls, that her example would go far to kill the foolish belief rife among the girls that the boathouse was haunted.

Nan and Bess had never told any of their mates about their own strange experience in the boathouse. Nothing new had developed regarding the haunt. The "black ghost--all black" had not been reported seen since the previous spring. So the general excitement rife in the school at that time had subsided.

Gradually Nan and Bess spoke to, and obtained the promise of attendance of twenty-five girls. Each was bound to secrecy; but a secret among twenty-five girls has about as much chance as a kitten in a kennel of fox terriers.

It was whispered from one to the other that Nan Sherwood had twenty-five dollars--some said fifty--to spend on a single "spread." The girls were eager to be invited; all were curious; and the Linda Riggs clique was clamorously jealous.