THOSE MEN AGAIN
The two girls saw nothing more of the men who had played such a
mysterious part in their trip, and before they had started, with
hundreds of other gaily dressed people, down the gangplank of the
_Dorian_ they had almost forgotten their strange adventure.
Nor, under the circumstances, could this be wondered at. All about them
was the bustle and excitement that is always attendant upon going
ashore.
Every one was in hilarious holiday mood, and Nan and Bess would have
been queer indeed if they had not entered into the spirit of the day
with all their hearts.
"I just can't keep my feet still," Bess confided to her chum, as they
filed slowly down the gangplank. "Isn't this the most wonderful day you
ever saw in your life, Nan? Just think, this kind of weather in
_February_! It does me good," she added, her eyes sparkling, "to think
of all the other girls at home going around with furs on and thick coats
and complaining of the cold. Oh, how I wish I could see them now."
"Elizabeth! what a mean disposition," said Nan demurely, adding with a
twinkle in her eyes, while she tried hard to keep her feet from
fox-trotting away with her down the gangplank: "Though I would like to
send a little note to Linda and tell her to be careful not to go out in
the cold. It might make her nose red. Oh, Bess, look down there!" She
leaned forward suddenly, her eyes shining with eagerness. "Isn't that
Grace? And Walter----"
"And Rhoda! Yes, it is, and they are waving to us," cried Bess eagerly.
"Of course Grace and Walter said they would be here to meet us, but I
was afraid they never would find us in all this crowd."
Someway the girls got down to the dock, were hugged by Grace and Rhoda,
greeted hilariously by Walter, and were hustled, out of breath, through
the crowd that thronged about them.
"How in the world did you get here, Rhoda?" demanded Nan, when she could
get a chance to ask the question.
"I thought I'd surprise you," declared the girl from Rose Ranch. "I
fixed it all up with Grace and told her not to say a word."
"It's grand!" declared Nan, beaming.
"The best ever," added Bess. "Oh, what grand times we girls are going to
have!"
"Sure we are going to have a grand time," said the girl from Rose
Ranch. "I think I deserve it, after all the trouble I've been through."
"What do you suppose, she was in a railroad wreck," burst out Grace. "A
real, live-to-goodness wreck, too."
"Oh, Rhoda, were you injured?" cried Nan quickly.
"Just a few scratches--on my left elbow and my shins. But it was a close
call, I can tell you."
"Where was it?" asked Bess.
"Out in Connecticut. I went there to visit a distant relative of my dad.
It was a little side line and our train ran into a freight. We knocked
open a car full of chickens and what do you think? Those chickens
scattered far and wide. I'll bet many a family is having chicken dinner
on the sly this week!"
"Then nobody was hurt?"
"Oh, yes, several were more or less bruised and one man had an arm
broken. But everybody was thankful, for they said it might have been
much worse. But it certainly was funny to see those chickens scattering
in every direction over the snow-covered fields," and Rhoda laughed at
the recollection.
"Gee, if a fellow had been there with a gun he might have had some
hunting," cried Walter.
"Oh, Walter, you wouldn't hunt chickens with a gun, would you?" asked
Nan, reproachfully.
"Don't know as I would," was the quick reply.
"Oh, but now we are together, won't we have lovely times," cried Bess.
"The very best ever," echoed Nan.
"Going to let me out?" demanded Walter.
"No, indeed, Walter, you are included."
The girls and Walter continued to compare notes, when all of a sudden
Rhoda uttered a cry.
"Girls, am I seeing a ghost?" she asked, staring straight ahead of her
toward a group of richly dressed people who were talking and laughing
together. "Or is that Linda Riggs?"
"Goodness, don't say it, Rhoda!" cried Bess in dismay. "It can't be
Linda!"
But it was! For at that moment the youngest of the much over-dressed
women in the group turned with a laugh to speak to someone behind her,
and the girls found themselves face to face with their schoolgirl enemy,
Linda Riggs.
For all their dislike of the girl, the chums would have spoken to her.
But Linda stared at them coolly for a second, and then deliberately
turned her back upon them and began to speak to a tall, gray-haired man
at her right, who the girls instinctively felt must be her father, the
railroad president.
"Those young ladies seemed to know you, my dear," they heard the tall
man say to Linda, as, flushed and indignant, the girls and Walter
pressed on through the crowd.
"They do," they heard Linda answer contemptuously, and with no attempt
to lower her voice. "But I prefer not to know them--especially that
Sherwood girl."
What the tall man said in answer, the girls could not hear, for they
were once more engulfed in a sea of chattering humanity whose din
swallowed up all individual sound.
Impulsive Bess wanted to turn back and tell "that horrible Riggs girl"
what she thought of her, but Nan put an arm about her angry chum and
hurried her on.
"But, Nan, I don't see how you can stand such things and never say a
word," cried Bess, indignantly. "I do believe you haven't any spirit. I
never could take an insult like that so calmly."
"I'm not a bit calm," replied Nan, gripping her bag fiercely. "Right
this minute, I'd like to get hold of Linda Riggs and tear her hair out
by the roots."
"Why didn't you do it then?" demanded excited Bess, and at this query
even Walter, who had been more incensed than any of the girls at the
insolent speech of Linda's, had to laugh.
"Yes, I would look pretty, wouldn't I?" laughed Nan, all her wrath
vanishing on the instant, although her dislike of purse-proud Linda was
more real than ever, "announcing my arrival in Jacksonville by a street
fight?"
"You would look pretty any way--even pulling Linda's hair out," laughed
Walter in her ear.
"Please don't be foolish, Walter," returned Nan loftily, at which, for
some unaccountable reason, Walter only chuckled the more.
The speech and the chuckle troubled Nan. It seemed in some ridiculous
fashion to bear out the silly things Bess had said about her and Walter
earlier in the trip.
She forgot all about her perplexity a few moments later, however, when
Walter helped Nan and Bess and Grace into the roomy tonneau of his big
car, put Rhoda in the front seat, squeezed himself in behind the wheel,
and started the motor.
"Well, how do you like Jacksonville, girls?" he called back to them as
the machine glided easily forward. "As good as Tillbury, is it?" he
added, with a glance at Nan and Bess.
"Not nearly," answered Bess loyally, although in her heart she knew that
they could put two or three Tillburys in Jacksonville and never miss
them.
The girls had known in a rather vague way that Jacksonville was a big
place, but they had never expected to see anything like the bustling,
thriving, wide-awake city they now drove through.
"Why, it is almost as noisy and crowded as New York," said Bess,
wide-eyed, as Walter skilfully threaded his way through the heavy
traffic. "And we thought that was simply awful. Walter, please be
careful."
"Don't worry," Walter sang back, grazing the rear wheel of another
machine by the very narrowest margin possible. "If we did hit anything,
we wouldn't be the ones to get hurt. This old bus could stop an express
train."
"Maybe it could," retorted Bess. "But please try it some time when you
are alone."
"Don't mind him," said Grace, with her quiet smile. "You know Walter
never does all he says."
"Don't I though----" Walter was beginning, when his sister cut him off
by turning eagerly to Nan and Bess.
"We're stopping at the Hampton," she said, the Hampton being one of the
largest and most important of all the large and important hotels in
Jacksonville. "Mother has engaged a perfectly lovely room for you girls.
Rhoda and I room together. It is just for one night, you know, for we
are going to take the train for Palm Beach to-morrow morning."
"Then," cried Nan, happily, "we shall have all the rest of to-day to do
as we please in."
"What bliss," breathed Bess. "Walter, you are going to be a perfect
angel, aren't you, and take us for a lovely long, long ride?"
"At your service, fair damsel," said Walter gallantly. "We were planning
that anyway," he went on to explain. "Mother and dad thought they would
like to come along, too."
"More bliss," cried Bess, adding, as a cloud suddenly darkened her face:
"I do hope we don't run across Linda any more. I declare, if I ever hear
her say another word against you, Nancy Sherwood, I shall just have to
kill her, that's all."
"Well, I must say I do wish she would stay home where she belongs," said
Nan with a troubled frown. "Wherever we go she seems sure to turn up and
spoil everything--or try to. I wonder if Cora is with her," she added.
"I didn't see her at the dock."
"Humph, you don't think she would be at the dock, do you?" asked Walter,
joining in the conversation. "Cora is a regular lady's maid to Linda
now, so Grace says. She must be a funny kind of girl to stand for that
sort of thing."
"Oh, Cora isn't so bad," said Nan. "I imagine she would like to break
away from Linda, but she doesn't know just how to do it. Is this where
we get out, Walter?" she asked, as the car slowed down before a building
that looked more like a palace than a hotel.
"This is where we get out," replied Walter, jumping from his seat and
running around to open the door for the girls. "Right this way, ladies.
Follow me and you'll wear diamonds. Here, boy!" he spoke to a loitering
colored boy who stood at the hotel entrance. "Carry these grips up to
three-twenty. The hat boxes, too. I suppose you want the hat boxes," he
said, turning to the girls with a grin.
"Well, I should say!" replied Bess. "Neither Nan nor I would ever smile
again if we should lose one of those hats. Would we, Nan?"
But Nan was looking behind her with startled eyes and never even heard
her friend's question.
"Walter!" she cried, grasping the boy's arm and pointing excitedly down
the street, "do you see those men over there getting out of that taxi?
Quick! They are turning into that hotel."
"The little fat fellow and the long, thin man?" asked Walter, with a
mystified line between his brows. "What about them? Friends of yours?"
"Take a good look at them," Nan cried, impatiently shaking his arm,
while Grace and Rhoda looked on in amazement. "If you should see them
again, I want you should know them."