YOU'RE GOING WITH ME
"But do you think the others can go?" Bess asked anxiously when Adair
MacKenzie and Alice had driven off in search of Mr. Sherwood. "To bring
him home where he belongs when he has visitors," Adair had said.
"What do you think, Momsey?" Nan referred the question to her mother.
The three were in the kitchen where Mrs. Sherwood was bustling about
preparing a company dinner.
"The good Lord only knows," Mrs. Sherwood shook her head as she sifted
more flour on her biscuit dough and then kneaded it lightly and
expertly. "I can only tell you two girls this. When Adair MacKenzie sets
out to do something, he usually does it. He has a way about him that
almost always wins people over to his side."
"Yes, but to Mexico. He wants to take us all to Mexico and he doesn't
even know us!" Bess couldn't believe it, not even after seeing and
hearing the old Scotchman. "And if I can't believe it," she questioned,
"how in the world will the others when they haven't even seen him or
heard him talk?"
"Don't you worry, Bessie," Mrs. Sherwood looked affectionately at this
girl who was almost a second daughter to her. "They'll be both seeing
him and hearing him talk before long now. If I know Adair MacKenzie at
all, he'll be at work on this thing before another day is up. And if
he's one-half the man he used to be, you might just as well begin
packing tonight."
"You mean to say you are sure we will all go?" Bess was incredulous.
"Yes, you'll go and have the grandest time you ever have had," Mrs.
Sherwood said confidently. "There never was another man like Adair
MacKenzie."
"Then I'm going?" Nan had, despite her cousin's assurance, been somewhat
doubtful. She knew that her mother had wanted her to stay at home this
summer, that she had been lonesome without her daughter the summer
before and was planning all sorts of little surprises for this vacation.
"Go! Of course you're going!" Mrs. Sherwood nearly dropped her biscuit
dough in her surprise at Nan's question. "And I shouldn't be a bit
surprised if your father and I were to go at least part way with you.
Adair said something about it. Aye, but he's a thoughtful soul."
So it came about that Rhoda Hammond, Grace and Walter Mason, Amelia
"Procrastination" Boggs, and Laura Polk, all school chums of Bess and
Nan, in the days that followed, received telegraphic invitations to
spend the summer with Nan in Mexico.
While each of them is laying her plans, packing her clothes and wiring
"Santa Claus", as Laura Polk immediately dubbed Cousin Adair, let's
briefly review the adventures of Nan Sherwood and her friends up to this
point.
Nan was born in Tillbury, a pleasant little town, some distance from any
big city, and her early school days were spent with Elizabeth Harley,
the only one of Nan's many friends who has followed her through all of
her adventures.
In the first book of the series, "Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp" or "The Old
Lumberman's Secret" Nan and Bess are pals at Tillbury High School. Here
Nan is extremely popular with all of her classmates and excels in
sports. She and Bess have grand times together, though the Sherwoods
live on a reduced income while Bess, the daughter of one of Tillbury's
wealthiest families, has everything that money can buy.
The first big disagreement the girls ever have comes in the opening
chapters of this book when Bess, having decided to go away to an
exclusive boarding school on the shores of Lake Michigan, tries to
induce Nan to go with her. Though Nan wants with all her heart to go,
she absolutely refuses to ask her parents because she knows that they
cannot afford to let her. She is happy later at her decision, because on
the eve of it, she discovers that her father has lost his job in the
Tillbury Mills. Everything looks extremely dark for the Sherwoods.
Momsey Sherwood is ill and Papa Sherwood, because of his age, is
complete at a loss as to know where to turn for a job.
However, when things are darkest, Mrs. Sherwood receives two letters.
One from Scotland informs her that she is sole heir of a fortune in
Scotland, and the other, from her cousin Adair MacKenzie, whom we have
already met, promises her aid until such time as she can collect on her
inheritance. With this, Nan's parents leave for Scotland and pack Nan
off to Northern Wisconsin where she spends an exciting year in the
lumber country with an uncle and aunt. Here, in chapter after chapter
that are full of thrills for Nan, those about her, and the reader, the
plucky young girl solves a mystery that, in the end, clears her uncle's
title to a valuable piece of property.
In the next volume of the series, "Nan Sherwood at Lakeview Hall" or
"The Mystery of the Haunted Boathouse" our young heroine goes off to
school with Bess. And there never was a nicer school anyplace than
Lakeview Hall. Situated on a bluff overlooking the lake it's like an old
castle. Mrs. Cupp, assistant to Dr. Beulah Prescott, is the keeper and
the girls, early in the volume, learn to respect her, if not to admire
her. Here, they make the acquaintance of a number of new friends.
There are Grace Mason and her brother Walter, children of a wealthy
Chicago family; Laura Polk, a red-headed girl whose lively imagination
and ready tongue are constantly getting her into difficulties; Amelia
Boggs, a serious book-loving soul with a roomful of clocks; and finally,
Linda Riggs, a snobbish, spoiled child, who is extremely jealous of Nan
and her well-deserved popularity.
Last, but not least, there is the boathouse ghost around whom is woven a
mystery that brings Nan and Walter Mason together in such a way that
they develop a keen admiration for one another. This book is chock full
of adventure, excitement and mystery and Lakeview Hall is the center of
it all.
Her friendship with Grace and Walter bring about her next big
experience, a visit to Chicago. In "Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays" or
"Rescuing the Runaways" the Lakeview Hall crowd spends Christmas
vacation in Grace Mason's palatial Chicago home. The story of Nan's
meeting with a very famous movie star and her solution to the mystery
surrounding the strange disappearance of two young farm girls who have
come to the city to go into the movies is recounted in this volume.
Next, Nan and her friends go off on a visit to a western ranch, the home
of Rhoda Hammond, a school chum. Here the northern girls get their first
taste of what it is to live in the wide open spaces of the west. The
story of lost treasure that is told in this volume of the series, "Nan
Sherwood at Rose Ranch" or "The Old Mexican's Treasure" is one that no
admirer of plucky Nan Sherwood would want to miss.
The year that follows this western adventure is a pleasant one at
Lakeview Hall and at its end, we find Nan and her friends trekking off
to Florida and Palm Beach. So, in "Nan Sherwood at Palm Beach" or
"Strange Adventures Among the Orange Groves" in a background of wide
sandy beaches, beautiful graceful palms, and a hotel that overlooks the
sea, a villain who has tried to cheat one of Nan's many acquaintances
out of her fortune, comes to a well-deserved end, and Nan emerges a
heroine once more. At the end of this volume, we find that Walter and
Nan are becoming more and more fond of one another, and we see the
Lakeview Hall girls teasing them about it again and again.
In the sixth volume, Mrs. Sherwood's Scotch connections bring about an
invitation to Nan to visit Scotland and the family estate of her
mother's people. Bess is heartbroken that her friend is going away
without her. However, she tries to conceal her disappointment and joins
with Nan's other friends in planning a grand farewell party. The party
proves to be a surprise all round and the great day ends with an
announcement by Dr. Prescott that she is taking a party of six girls
abroad to see the king and queen of England crowned! Such excitement!
Such last minute rush! Such fun! Never was there a happier, more
exciting, more adventurous crossing of the ocean than the Lakeview Hall
crowd enjoyed on the S. S. Lincoln. And the whole is rounded out in the
last chapter with Nan as a lady-in-waiting to the Queen at the
coronation. How this all came about is a story that all Nan Sherwood
fans will want to read.
It was the part his little cousin had played in the coronation that made
Adair MacKenzie resolve to hunt her up. It was this that brought him to
Tillbury and the cottage on Amity street on the day the present volume
opens.
"Good biscuits!" Adair MacKenzie bit off a piece of their lightness the
evening the present story opens. They were all sitting at the Sherwood
dinner table. There he sat, chewing reflectively, as he glanced down the
table at young Nan.
"So you helped crown the good queen," he remarked, "And it didn't go to
your head. You're a good lass. You Blakes," he turned to Mrs. Sherwood
now, "were always a bunch of modest creatures. That's why I like you.
Now, Bessie there," he pointed to Bess who had stayed for dinner, "she's
not so modest, but she's kind and loyal. She's a little spoiled, but
she'll get by."
Bess blushed all shades of the rainbow at Adair's frankness. Used to
being babied and somewhat pampered at home, his outspokenness troubled
her. She felt strangely like crying. Nan caught her eye and smiled
encouragingly. Mrs. Sherwood patted her hand beneath the tablecloth. And
Alice, well, Alice was a dear, for she turned the conversation toward
school, and both Nan and Bess utterly forgot themselves in telling of
the horse show in which they had both taken part during the last week at
school.
"So you think you can ride, eh?" Adair MacKenzie was secretly pleased
at both of the young girls. "Well, we'll see. I'll put you each on a
Mexican mule and let you try to climb a mountain and see what happens."
He chuckled at the thought.
Alice laughed merrily at this. "Well, you'll never get me on one," she
vowed. "Once was enough. Instead of the mule pulling me up the narrow
path, I pulled the mule up. I never worked harder in my life."
"Oh, my sweet, you never worked at all." Adair shook his finger at his
daughter. "But you'll work this summer--if that old housekeeper of ours
keeps her resolution not to go down to that dirty hole which we call a
hacienda. The words are hers," he explained to Nan and Bess.
"She once, when she was a very young girl, spent a summer on a sugar
beet farm here in the north. A lot of Mexicans worked on it. They were
miserably treated and poorly paid. As a result their huts were like
hovels. She saw some of them and now she says that wild horses couldn't
drag her into that country down there. She'd rather see me starve first.
But I'll get her yet." Adair MacKenzie smiled as though he liked
opposition. "I'll show her who is boss," he ended.
"Of course you will, daddy," Alice agreed. "But now tell us, when are we
going? How long are we going to stay? And whom have you invited?"
This last question put Adair MacKenzie in a corner and he knew it.
Really, a very kind and extremely impulsive soul, when he went on these
summer jaunts for pleasure he was apt to go about for weeks, inviting
all his friends. As a result, no matter how large the house was he
rented, it was always too small, and no matter what preparation Alice
made for guests, they were always inadequate.
Now, as he sat thinking, a mischievous light came into his eye. "There
is only one that I've invited," he teased, "besides these girls that
will interest you."
"And that is--?"
"Walker Jamieson, that smart-alecky reporter that we met in San
Francisco a couple of years ago. Remember?"
"Remember? Of course I remember and he wasn't smart alecky. He was kind
and sweet and--" But Alice didn't finish her sentence, for she became
conscious of the fact that all the eyes around the dinner table were on
her. She blushed prettily.
"Anyway," she justified herself, "he'll be a help in handling you, for
he's smart, almost as smart as you are, daddy."
"A reporter! You mean to say a real newspaper reporter will be down
there with us?" Nan couldn't contain herself any longer.
"Yep, a no good reporter." Adair MacKenzie tried hard to look
disdainful as he said this, but he didn't succeed very well and both Nan
and Bess guessed that he had a genuine regard for the "young scamp" as
he called him. "Got to have someone around," he muttered as he drank his
coffee, "to help handle you women, even if it's a young scalawag who
spends all his time tracking down stories for your worthless newspaper."
"Stories!" Bess and Nan were wide-eyed.
"Now, see here," Adair shook his finger in the direction of the two
young girls, "reporters are no good. They're a lazy lot that hang around
with their feet on desks pretending to think. Think! Why, I never knew
one yet that had a thought worth telling, let alone writing.
"This one that you are going to meet is no better than the rest. M-m-m,
and no worse either," he conceded as he noted the expression on Alice's
face. "I asked him to come along because he has a knack of making things
lively wherever he is.
"Soon's he gets those two big feet of his down off his desk, he makes
things hum. That's the way he is, lazy one minute, full of action the
next. If there's absolutely nothing happening, he knows how to stir
things up. I rather like a man like that--not that I like him," he added
hastily, "but if we're going to go across the border this summer, got to
have someone like him around. Might just as well be Jamieson as anyone
else."
"And will he write stories while we're there and will they be in the
paper?" Nan was reluctant to let the conversation about the young
reporter drop.
"Never can tell anything about people like him," Adair MacKenzie shook
his head as though he would be the last person in the world to predict
anything about reporters. Could he have looked into the future he would
have shaken it even more violently, for in the next few weeks Walker
Jamieson, with the help of Nan and the Lakeview Hall crowd, was to
uncover in Mexico one of the biggest stories of the year.