GREAT EXPECTATIONS
Nan was really going to Palm Beach! She could scarcely realize her good
fortune.
Grace had written that some cousins who were to go had disappointed
them, so good accommodations were assured to Nan and Bess when they
reached Palm Beach.
Nan was up in her bedroom in the evening looking dreamily out of the
window and imagining she was already at the famous winter resort when
she gave a start.
Two men were slinking around, behind some trees on the opposite side of
the street! From time to time they gazed at the house as if looking for
somebody.
"The same men! What can it mean?"
Nan breathed the words to herself. She had seen these men before since
coming home from school. They had leered at her when on an errand to the
drugstore, and one of them had acted as if he wanted to speak to her
while she was at the depot asking for a timetable. But a man friend had
come up to greet her and the stranger had slunk away.
Nan's first impulse was to call her father and mother. But then she
hesitated. Why worry her parents, and especially her mother, when, after
all, it might mean little or nothing?
She looked again. Some men had come up the street. At sight of them the
two slinking ones shrank back and presently hurried away.
"I hope I never see them again," said the girl to herself. But this wish
was not to be gratified.
Yet the next day Nan gave the strange men hardly a thought. There were
so many things to be done in preparation for the great trip.
"It's not like going out to Rose Ranch, where any old thing was good
enough to wear," Nan confided to Bess. "We've got to look our best, on
Grace's account as well as our own."
"And Walter's," added Bess, and then Nan promptly threw a book at her
chum.
A day more, and then came the all-important time for departure.
"Oh, just to think of it! We are really and truly going!"
Nan was seated on an overturned suitcase on the porch of the little
"dwelling in amity." Her hands were clasped tightly in front of her to
keep her from jumping up and running off madly somewhere, anywhere--just
to relieve her tremendous excitement.
Never in her life had it seemed so hard to keep still. Her trunk had
gone to the station, her bag was packed, and everything was ready to
catch the ten-o'clock train for New York. From there she and Bess were
to take the boat, which was to carry them swiftly down the coast to
Jacksonville, the gateway to Florida.
Everything was in readiness that is save Momsey. All that separated her
from that desirable state was one small and pretty fur hat which Momsey
was just now fitting on in front of the mirror in the little
sitting-room.
But it did take a long time just to put on one hat, thought Nan with a
sigh. Momsey never used to be so slow. Then, unable to bear it a moment
longer, she jumped to her feet and peeped in at the door of the little
"dwelling in amity."
What she saw made her pause, a smothered exclamation on her lips, her
eyes dancing. For Papa Sherwood was there with Momsey and he was looking
at her with as much admiration in his eyes as though they had been
married only one year, instead of--oh, Nan couldn't remember how many!
"That trip overseas was just what you needed to make a girl of you
again, Momsey," Papa Sherwood was saying in a tone that matched his
look. "You might be our Nan's older sister. And isn't that a new hat?"
Momsey had started to make him a demure curtsey when Nan's clear laugh
interrupted the tete-a-tete.
"Excuse me," she said, her eyes dancing. "Far be it from me to be in the
way of anything--and, Momsey, you do look wonderful in that hat--but you
know that train won't wait all day. Oh, Momsey! Papa Sherwood!"--she
waltzed in upon them and hugged them gaily--"isn't it perfectly,
wonderfully gorgeous?"
"What now, honey?" asked Momsey, as she rearranged the pretty hat which
Nan had pushed down unbecomingly over one eye.
"What now?" repeated Nan breathlessly. "What now? Why,
Florida--Jacksonville--Palm Beach! No, don't look at me as though I had
gone crazy. I'm only raving. Come on, come on, you slow pokes." She half
pushed her laughing parents toward the door. "You can carry the
suitcase, Papa Sherwood, and I'll carry the hat box. There's only one
other bundle, and I'll take that one and Momsey can bring up the rear
with the lunch. I wonder what Bess will say when she sees the lunch,"
she chuckled, as her father carefully locked the door of the little
house and put the key in his pocket.
"Well, I think I know what she will say when she tastes it," said her
father as all three started down the street toward the more pretentious
house where Bess lived. "For Momsey put up the lunch with her own
hands--and I saw what went into it."
"Yes, and you might tell her, honey," added Mrs. Sherwood, with a soft
laugh, "what hard work I had to keep you from eating all the nuts from
the brown bread sandwiches."
"Oh, Momsey, don't," sighed Nan. "You will make me hungry again, and I
have just had breakfast. See! There's Bess. Goodness, doesn't she look
pretty?"
Both Momsey and Papa Sherwood had to admit that Bess was very pretty
indeed in the bright winter sunlight, but each privately thought that
their Nan, with her sparkling brown eyes and flushed cheeks, was, in her
own way, even prettier than Bess.
"Hello, you folks!" called Bess as she reached them, out of breath from
exercise and excitement. "I thought you were never coming. Goodness!
what are you carrying two grips for? One is enough for me." Then,
without waiting for a reply, she raced on to another question. "And that
box! What's in it, Nan?" She gazed suspiciously at Nan's mischievous
face. "It looks like a lunch box. It never is!"
"Yes, it ever is," mimicked Nan, in exactly Bess's tone, adding with a
laugh: "And Papa Sherwood very nearly ate all the nuts from the
sandwiches."
"Nan----" began Mrs. Sherwood reproachfully; but at that moment Mrs.
Harley appeared in the doorway and the reproaches were forgotten.
Momsey would not go inside, as the minutes to train time were getting
very few, so after a short disappearance Mrs. Harley joined them and
they started toward the station together. The two girls, Nan and Bess,
lead the way, swinging their bags and talking excitedly.
"I'm almost scared to death," confided Bess, as they turned the corner
that led down to the station and the train that was to bear them so soon
on their wonderful journey.
"Scared?" asked Nan, her eyes big with wonder. "What are you scared
about?"
"Oh, I don't suppose I should call it exactly scared," retracted Bess.
"Just sort of excited and--and--nervous. Going all alone you know--and
everything."
"This isn't the first time we have traveled alone," said Nan
practically. "And we have always come out 'right side up with care.'"
"Oh, Nan, you _are_ so calm," sighed Bess in exasperation. "Won't
anything ever get you excited?"
"Excited," repeated Nan, gazing in amazement at her chum. "I'm so
excited this very minute that I'm all thrilly inside."
"If you are," said Bess, eyeing her judicially, "nobody would ever know
it. That's just the trouble with you," she added plaintively, "you are
always hiding things and having secrets from me when you know very well
that no one ought ever to have a secret from her chum."
Nan put an arm about the waist of the girl and laughed.
"You can't quarrel with me, especially this morning, Bess," she said,
adding soothingly: "Besides, I haven't had a secret from you in--oh,
ever so long. Not since Beautiful Beulah."
For Bess had been very much put out indeed about Nan's secret possession
of Beautiful Beulah, the big doll that had formerly helped Nan over many
difficulties.
"I know," said Bess, in answer to Nan's declaration. "But that is just
the reason why I expect you to start something. You have been 'too good
to be true.'"
"Well, you are a silly," said Nan absently, as her eyes wandered down
the double line of shining rails to the spot where they disappeared in
the distance. "I wonder if that mean old train is going to be late after
all."
"No, there it is! There it is, Nan!" cried Bess, suddenly dancing wildly
up and down the platform. "Oh, tell the folks to hurry. Mother has my
hat box. I never, never could go to Palm Beach without that hat." And
she ran back toward the older folks, waving her bag at them frantically
while Nan looked after her laughingly.
"I wonder what Bess would do," she thought, without the slightest trace
of conceit, "if she didn't have me to anchor her down all the time."
The train steamed into the station just as Momsey and Papa Sherwood and
Mrs. Harley, with the excited Elizabeth in the lead, rushed upon the
platform.
Nan was very much surprised to find that though she had become used to
rather frequent partings with Momsey and Papa Sherwood, this one was not
one bit easier than the others had been.
She hugged Papa Sherwood, kissed Momsey a dozen times, in spite of the
fact that Bess was tugging at her elbow, and finally stumbled some way
up the steps and into the car.
"Goodness! Anybody would think you were going away to stay forever,"
gasped Bess, as she tried to disengage herself from a tangle of bag and
hat box and umbrella. "For goodness' sake, look out, Nan. We are
moving." This, because Nan stuck her head far out of the window to get a
last look at the dear folks on the platform.
"I know we're moving," sighed Nan, as she turned from the window and
began patiently to separate Bess from her belongings and stow the
articles away in the wire basket overhead. "I always have a funny
feeling as if I were leaving half of me behind every time I say good-bye
to Momsey and Papa Sherwood."
"I should think you would be used to it by this time," said Bess, as
she removed her hat and fluffed out her pretty curls. "We certainly
can't complain of having to stay too much in one place."
"I should say not!" exclaimed Nan, as she thought of how many wonderful
things had happened since that day when she had started out for the
great north woods with Uncle Henry. "But, oh, Bess," she added, turning
happy eyes upon her chum, "we never went on quite such a wonderful
journey as this--not even when we went to Rose Ranch."
"It all comes of having such nice friends," replied Bess, taking out a
tiny hand mirror and regarding the tip of her nose critically. "And
friends with money," she added significantly.
"Bess! How you talk!" cried the girl from Tillbury, turning a shocked
gaze upon her friend. For Nan Sherwood never failed to be shocked at
Elizabeth's very evident love of money and what it could buy. "If it
were only money we cared for we might have made friends with Linda
Riggs, I suppose. I heard her say something about going to Europe next
summer, and I shouldn't wonder if she would take Cora Courtney and one
or two more of her satellites with her. Perhaps if we had been very
good, she might have asked us."
"Well, it would have been fun," said Bess, wickedly enjoying the shocked
look that deepened on Nan's face. "Cheer up, Nan," she added with one
of her sudden changes of mood. "You know very well how I hate Linda.
However," she continued, "I suppose we really ought to be grateful to
her now."
"Grateful?" repeated Nan wonderingly.
"For damaging the heating plant up at school, silly," explained Bess,
"and giving us a chance to go to Florida."