TELL US ABOUT THE HACIENDA
"What did you think?" Laura inquired afterwards when the girls were all
settled in a hotel close to the border for the night. "That the walls of
that inner office would just cave in when Mr. MacKenzie started
bellowing."
"Why, Laura Polk, how disrespectfully you talk!" Bess exclaimed from her
place in front of the dressing table where she was brushing her hair.
"And Mr. MacKenzie is our host too. If it weren't for him we wouldn't be
down here now. At this minute we'd probably be on the shores of a lake
near Tillbury."
"Oh, Bess, you know I'm not one bit disrespectful, really," Laura
retorted. "I like Mr. MacKenzie real well and you know I do. I'd give
anything in the world to be able to roar the way he does." There was
genuine longing in her voice as she spoke. "Just imagine," she
continued, "how handy that roar would have come in the night we routed
the ghost. I just think," she continued to play with the idea of making
use of Adair MacKenzie's roar, "how handy it would come in, if we were
to meet Linda Riggs.
"Couldn't we manage," she was lying prone on the bed, and, as this new
idea came to her, she cupped her chin in her hands and looked off into
space, "to have your cousin around sometime when Linda Riggs was
present. I'd love to have him analyze her the way he did us today. Such
fun!" Laura's eyes danced merrily at the thought.
"And then I'd like to have her open her mouth to protest," Laura
continued, "and have him roar at her. Oh, I'd give a million dollars,
a trillion dollars," she amended generously, "to hear that roar."
"You and me too," Bess joined in. "By the way, have any of you heard
anything about her lately."
"Not I," Nan answered, "and I must say the less I hear about her and the
less I see of her, the better. There was a rumor, you know, at school
that she was going to be allowed to come back this fall."
"I know it," Bess somehow always managed to hear all the rumors, "and I
can't for the life of me understand why Dr. Prescott would ever let her
reenter. Certainly, she's no credit to Lakeview Hall, or to any school
for that matter. If I were a principal I wouldn't let her in my school.
In fact, if I got the chance at all, I'd just slam the door right in her
face."
"Oh, Bess, do you ever sound as though you meant it? Cousin Adair
should hear you talk now. He thinks that Laura has a temper. He should
hear you sometimes." Nan laughed at her pal.
"I know it, but I think I'm more than justified. She's certainly caused
us plenty of trouble from the very first time we ever met her. I'll
never forget how she embarrassed us on the train that took us to
Lakeview the first time."
"Nor how Professor Krenner took our part," Nan added.
"Nor how you outwitted her and drove up to school in the back of Walter
Mason's car as though you were a princess returning to her palace,"
Laura giggled. "There never was a freshman created more of a stir than
you did that night. Boy, did we ever put our heads together in corridor
four and decide that we would have to put you in your place right away,"
she continued slangily.
"And did I ever hate you, Laura Polk," Bess laughed now at the
recollection. "You embarrassed me so about that lunch box that when I
went to bed that night I cried myself to sleep."
"Poor Bessie," Laura sympathized. "You were such a proud little thing
that I never in the world thought I'd ever be able to get along with
you."
"Get along with Bess!" Nan exclaimed, "if you had ever heard what Bess
said about you that night, you would have been surprised that she ever
spoke to you again."
"What did you say, Bess?" Laura looked positively impish as she looked
at Bess's reflection in the mirror.
"Oh, I don't remember." Bess was obviously concealing the truth.
"You do too," Amelia joined in as she wound the pretty little travelling
clock that had been given her the week before.
"If you don't tell, I will," Nan was enjoying the situation as much as
the rest, for she saw that Bess was not really embarrassed.
"Go ahead then and see if I care," Bess retorted, giving a few final
strokes to her hair.
"Well, you said," Nan began slowly, "that that homely red-headed Polk
girl was just as mean as she could be!"
"Did she say that?" Laura laughed heartily. Even in those days she would
have been the first to laugh at herself. Now she could laugh doubly, for
the homely red-headed girl had, since then, blossomed out into a pretty,
fair complexioned curly headed miss with a very pleasing personality.
And so the girls continued for some time to talk over events and
happenings that are recounted in other books of this series until Laura
turned to Nan, "Anyway," she said, "if we may return to the present and
Laredo, Texas, will you please tell us just how your cousin managed to
extract those passes from the authorities this afternoon? I respected
his abilities to get what he wanted from the moment mother capitulated
and let me come down here with what she called, 'a perfect stranger,'
but I never respected them as much as I did when I saw that white
uniformed official bowing you people out of that office as though you
were the President's party itself."
"Wasn't he just grand!" Nan's eyes were alight at the recollection.
"That man was none other than a special aid to the Mexican consular
office here in Laredo, and he nearly fell all over trying to help us
after cousin Adair ceased his storming and told those people who he was.
I never saw anything like it in my life.
"It was 'Si, senor, this,' and 'Si, senor, that' until Alice and Walker
and I began to think that we were really somebody, if only by reflected
glory."
"Well, you certainly looked like somebody very important when you came
out," Bess agreed. "I wondered for a moment whether I had really heard
allright when you went in."
"Then you did hear us?" Nan laughed.
"All Mexico did," Laura put in. "Really, at first we thought another
revolution was taking place. Grace here was looking around for
someplace to hide herself. Amelia was clutching her watch to her with
a look of determination which said as plainly as anything 'no foraging
rebel is going to get this' and Rhoda looked as though she wished she
had brought her trusty six shooter along. And then when we had gotten
ourselves all worked up to the point of accepting the inevitable, who
should come round the corner but you and Mr. Jamieson, Alice and her
father!"
"You sound as though we disappointed you," Nan remarked.
"Oh, not at all." Laura hastened to correct this impression. "I don't
believe Mr. MacKenzie has ever disappointed anyone in his life. He just
couldn't. Not with that cane, that roar, and that honesty which stops at
nothing. He's a dear. Now tell us, Nan, all you know about this place we
are going to."
"I've done that a thousand times since I met you in St. Louis," Nan
responded as she pulled off her dress and slipped her arms into the
lounging robe that the Lakeview Hall girls had given her at a surprise
party in her honor more than a year before.
"Oh, no, you haven't," Laura denied. "We made you spend most of the
time telling us about this angel of a cousin that appeared out of a
clear sky and offered to take us all to Mexico. Doesn't sound real even
now when we're here."
"There's one thing about it," Amelia added, "if one can't have rich
relations oneself, the next best thing in the world is to have charming
friends who have them."
"Here, here!" Laura raised a protesting hand. "You're out of order. The
first thing you know Nan will be thinking we're fond of her."
"Oh, you old ducks," Nan looked at them all fondly. "Don't you know that
cousin Adair knew that if he didn't invite all of you that I wouldn't
come at all? Now, let's forget all of this gratitude stuff. It
embarrasses me."
"All right then," Bess agreed, "but you really haven't told Rhoda
anything at all about the hacienda, Nan."
"I don't know anything myself," Nan admitted after some hesitation.
"I've tried and tried to get cousin Adair to tell me something about the
place, but he just won't say anything. I'm not sure whether he knows and
won't tell or whether he doesn't know himself. At any rate, he's being
extremely mysterious about the whole thing. Says that we didn't see
anything when we saw Emberon, that this place that we are going has that
beat all hollow. Now what do you people make of that?"
"Dungeons, secret passage, weird wailing of bagpipes, that's what
Emberon had," Laura summarized. "If this Mexican hacienda has anything
better to offer, I'd like to see it."
"And so would I," Nan agreed. She almost resented the idea that anything
could possibly be any nicer than the old Blake estate in Scotland. "And
listen, he says this further, that if we think we had adventures in
Scotland and England, we just haven't seen anything yet. What in the
world do you suppose he means?"
"If Doctor Prescott said that, or Mrs. Cupp, or your father or mine,"
Rhoda answered, "I might possibly hazard a guess as to what was meant,
but there's no telling about this cousin of yours, Nan."
"No, he's as unpredictable as the seasons, Alice says, and the only
thing we can do is wait." Nan sounded as though waiting was the hardest
thing in the world to do.