sighed her friend. “How will you ever get all these things back into that bag?”

“Oh, tumble ’em in,” said the careless Bess. “There must be room for them, or they would never have got in there in the first place. But listen here! I thought I remembered the name. Your Professor Krenner is on the staff of the school.”

“What!”

“Yes. He teaches higher mathematics and architectural drawing. ‘Architectural drawing’! What girl wants to take that? Of course, the mathematics is compulsory, but the drawing is elective. Dear me! he’s a sour looking apple.”

“Not when you get close to him,” Nan said quickly. “He has kind eyes.”

“Humph!” Bess said again.

The man occupying the seat directly ahead of the two girls left at the very next station. Immediately Professor Krenner, who seemed to be much interested in Nan and Bess, crossed the aisle with his bag and sat down in the empty seat.

“Well, Miss,” he said to Nan, his eyelids wrinkling at the corners as though a smile lurked behind the shell-bowed spectacles, “I see you have not allowed that little contretemps to blast all the pleasure of your journey. Are you and your friend going to school?”

“Yes, sir. This is my chum, Elizabeth Harley, Professor Krenner,” Nan said.

“We are going to Lakeview Hall,” Bess put in.

“Indeed?”

Bess showed him the printed circular sent out by Dr. Beulah Prescott. “We know all about you, sir,” she said boldly.

“Do you?” he returned, with a rather grim smile about his wide mouth. “Then you know much more than I know myself, and I hope some day when we are better acquainted that you will explain to me, my dear, this complex personality that is known as Alpheus Krenner.”

Bess flushed a little; but Nan chuckled. She liked this odd, ugly man, with his querulous voice and dry way of speaking. The twinkling eyes took the rough edge off much that he said.

“So you are two of the new girls I shall meet in my mathematics classes this year,” he proceeded. “Do you both know your multiplication tables?”

“Yes, sir,” said Nan demurely, while Bess looked rather indignant. “And we have been a little farther, too, in arithmetic. But how about the drawing, sir? Don’t you expect to meet us in those classes?”

“No,” replied Professor Krenner, soberly. “No girl cares for such instruction.”

“No?” cried Bess, becoming interested.

“I have never had a single pupil in architectural drawing at Lakeview Hall,” admitted the gentleman.

“Then why do they have it in the list of elective studies?” asked Nan, as much puzzled as her chum.

“Why, you see,” said the perfectly serious professor, “Dr. Prescott insists upon each instructor having two courses—one study that is compulsory, and another that is elective. I am not a versatile man. I might have suggested instruction on the key-bugle, which I play to the annoyance of my neighbors; but there is already a musical instructor at the Hall.

“I might have suggested a class in the ancient and honorable calling of cobbling (which is the handmaid of Philosophy, I believe, for I have found most cobblers to be philosophers) as I often repair my own shoes,” pursued Professor Krenner, with the utmost gravity. “But there is a lady at the Hall who will teach you to do very ladylike tricks in burnt leather, and the two arts might conflict.

“So, being naturally of a slothful disposition, and being quite sure that no young girl would care for architecture, which is my hobby, I suggested my elective study. I think that Dr. Prescott considers it a joke.”

Bess gazed at him with a puzzled expression of countenance. She did not exactly understand. But Nan appreciated his dry humor, and her own eyes danced.

“I believe I should like to take architectural drawing,” she said demurely.

“Oh, Nan!” gasped Bess.

The professor’s eyes twinkled behind the great, round spectacles. “I shall have to guard against that,” he said. “No young lady at the Hall has ever yet expressed such a desire—not even your friend, Miss Riggs.”

“Oh! you don’t mean to say that that horrid girl who treated Nan so, goes to Lakeview Hall?” Bess cried out.

“She doesn’t, really, does she, sir?” asked Nan, anxiously.

“Linda Riggs? Oh, yes. Didn’t you know that?”

“Oh, dear, me,” sighed Nan.

“Well!” cried Bess. “Who is she?”

“It is no breach of confidence on my part,” replied the dry professor, “for she explains the fact to everybody, if I tell you that she is the daughter of Mr. Henry W. Riggs, the railroad magnate.”

“Then she must be very rich,” almost whispered Bess.

“Her father is,” Professor Krenner said briefly.

Bess was deeply impressed, it was evident. But Nan already dreaded the shadow of Linda Riggs’ presence in her school life.

CHAPTER IV
LUCK AND PLUCK

Nan found Professor Krenner a most amusing companion. She was eager to hear all she could from him regarding the school to which she and Bess Harley were bound.

The several male instructors at Lakeview Hall did not reside there, but lived near by in the village of Freeling. That is, the other gentlemen of Dr. Prescott’s staff did so. Professor Krenner, who was unmarried, lived in a cabin he had built under the bluff on the lake shore.

“I am not far from the old boathouse, which is quite a famous place, by the way, as you will find when you get to the Hall. I am not troubled much with visitors because of my proximity to the boathouse. That is taboo with most of the young ladies.”

“Why?” queried the curious Bess, promptly.

“I believe it is considered to possess one of those rare birds, a ‘hant,’” chuckled the professor. “By night, at least, it is given a wide berth by even the most romantic miss in the school.”

“Oh! a real ghost?” gasped Bess, deliciously excited.

“That is quite impossible, is it not?” queried Professor Krenner, in his gentle way of poking fun. “A ghost must necessarily be impalpable; then, how can it be real?”

Bess did not like being “made fun of,” so she whispered to Nan; but the latter liked to hear the professor talk. That he was an odd man she was sure; but he was nothing like Toby Vanderwiller, the lumberman, or the other crude characters she had met at Pine Camp. What would Bess have said to Mr. Fen Llewellen, for instance? Or what would her chum think, even, of her cousin, Tom Sherwood?

Bess soon became anxious for a change and she begged Nan to come into the dining car for luncheon.

“But we have our lunch,” Nan pointed out.

“I don’t care. I don’t want a lot of stale sandwiches and fruit,” Bess declared.

“I don’t want to waste what little money I have, when your mother bought us a perfectly lovely lunch,” said Nan, cheerfully.

“It isn’t nice to eat it here,” Bess objected.

“Other people are doing so.”

“I don’t care,” snapped Bess.

“Oh, now, Bess——”

“I’ve got a dollar,” interrupted Bess. “I don’t see why mother wouldn’t let me have more money while traveling; but she didn’t.”

“Good reason,” laughed Nan. “You know you’d lose it.” She failed to tell Bess that Mrs. Harley had entrusted her with some money to use, “if anything should happen.” Nan was