Nan Sherwood at Palm Beach Part 17

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.

"h.e.l.lo, 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, "n.o.body 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 s.h.i.+ning 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."