Nan Sherwood on the Mexican Border Part 15

"Bess, be quiet!" Nan warned. "You'll have everyone looking at you.

Linda is a little prig and she does make trouble and I don't like her any more than you do, but there's no use making things unpleasant because she's happened to turn up here where we are. Forget her."

"Forget her!" Bess exclaimed. "You can't forget a thorn that's forever sticking in your flesh. Trying to forget her doesn't do any good. She always makes trouble. It's best to watch her so that you will be prepared for what happens."

Perhaps Bess was right. Certainly, if at other times Nan and Bess had been more watchful they might have been able to avoid trouble. But Nan always believed that there was some good in everyone and she was always trustful. She felt often that Linda, because of her wealth and the fact that her mother was dead and her father tried to give her everything she wanted, was not entirely to blame for her actions. And Bess, well, Bess's att.i.tude toward Linda had changed considerably since their first meeting.

Then Bess had thought that the daughter of the railroad magnate would be a nice person to have for a friend, for Bess was decidedly impressed by her wealth, by the way she ordered people around, and the way she dressed. Bess had even written home in the first days at school and told her mother that she didn't have at all the proper kind of clothes to wear, if she was going to chum around with people that amounted to something. She had Linda in mind when she wrote it, Linda's clothes and Linda's social position. But Linda had soon shown Bess that there was no room for her in her world.

Girls that Linda called friend, if there was any such word in her vocabulary, had to bow to all her wishes. She liked them only if they thought everything she did and said was right. No girl could be her friend and have a will of her own. No girl could be her friend and have other friends too. Linda wanted to be the very center of everyone's attention. As a consequence she had no real friends at all.

Bess never a.n.a.lyzed this to herself, but after one or two attempts to go around with Linda, she gave up entirely and grew to dislike her very much, as all the readers of the Nan Sherwood series know. She disliked her particularly because of the mean things she had done to Nan, for if Bess had no other outstanding characteristic, she did have a sense of justice that was almost as strong as Nan's.

This she had although her sympathies were not as deep nor as understanding as Nan's. Bess was apt to accept or reject things and people on account of appearances. Nan never did this. She liked everyone and had always had some sort of sixth sense that made her look beneath surfaces and find the true person. Thus she made friends with all sorts of people.

This was the reason that Nan led such an adventurous life. This was the reason everyone liked her. Everyone called Linda sn.o.bbish. A few people called Bess the same. But no one ever thought of applying the word to Nan.

And Nan seldom talked about people. So now, as the girls sat in the arena in Mexico City waiting for the next bullfighter to come into the ring, Nan was doing her best to quiet her friend.

"There's no reason whatsoever to get so excited," she said in an undertone to Bess. "She's sitting way down below us so we won't have to even talk to her when we go out. We'll be up the stairs and out the exit before she does. We'll probably never even see her again while we're here."

"That's right," Laura agreed, talking in a whisper too. "And though you might think that you could prepare yourself for what might happen if you did encounter Linda, you never could. No one ever knows what that girl might do. And, Elizabeth Harley, you're not smart enough to guess."

Laura being Laura with her red hair and her love for battle couldn't resist adding this thrust.

"Well, I could try anyway," Bess retorted.

"Say, what are you people all talking about so quietly?" Amelia leaned over and asked now. "Why, you didn't even pay any attention when Mr.

Jamieson took Grace out."

"Took Grace out!" Nan exclaimed, noticing now for the first time that two in the party were missing. "Why?"

"She almost fainted when she saw all the blood streaming from the bull, so just before he was killed, Walker Jamieson took her by the arm and said they were going for a walk and would be back soon."

"I don't blame her," Bess said emphatically. "I would have fainted myself--"

"--if you had been watching the bullfight instead of Linda Riggs," Nan supplied the end of the sentence.

"I guess you are right," Bess laughed. "That girl certainly does have a habit of getting in my hair. I'm always on pins and needles whenever she is around."

"There, Bessie," Nan tried to smooth her friend's ruffled feelings.

"Just you sit quietly and watch the next fight and you'll feel better.

We'll see that Linda doesn't cross your path."

"She hadn't better," Bess replied and then did try to devote herself to watching the next fight on the program.

CHAPTER XVII

A HASTY DEPARTURE

"Sit quietly and watch a bullfight!" Adair MacKenzie had heard Nan's counsel to Bess. "Never heard of such a thing. Never saw such a thing happen. Couldn't possibly sit quietly and watch a bullfight. Too exciting. Too much blood and gore. No place to bring a woman."

Adair had been upset by Grace's fainting spell and now he was sorry he had ever brought the girls here. Already he was casting about in his mind for something else to do that would wipe the memory of the unpleasantness of the spectacle out of their minds. He was oblivious of the fact that none of them outside of perhaps Nan and Amelia had witnessed the fight with their whole attention. He didn't yet know the story of Linda. The fact that her presence distracted them consequently had gone un.o.bserved.

"Got your things? Come on. We're going now." Abruptly he made up his mind and plunged into action without further ado.

"But father," Alice demurred.

"Don't 'but' me," Adair answered. "We're going to get out of this outlandish place right away. Can't have you all fainting on my hands.

Ready?" He was already halfway out the row and effectively blocking the view of the ring of all the people who had seats behind his party. But it didn't matter to him. In fact, he was so concerned with his own immediate problem that no one else in the world existed. Now he turned around again to see if the girls were following him.

"Fine spectacle for civilized people to put on," he muttered. "Hurry, you people. Can't be all day getting out of here."

"That's right." The voice that agreed with him was an American voice and it startled him. Adair looked up. "What's that?" he asked the question gruffly.

"I said, 'that's right,'" the stranger answered. He was sitting about three rows behind where Adair was standing.

"What do you mean?" Adair looked more belligerent than ever.

"I mean you can't be all day getting out of here." The voice in back answered positively.

"W-w-why, you old--old--old," Adair spluttered. He could think of no epithet appropriate and yet forceful enough to call his critic in the presence of the girls. So his spluttering died away as he brandished his cane and just stood and looked.

"Daddy, daddy," Alice put a soft hand on his arm. "Do come. We are blocking the view."

"Nothing to see down there anyway," Adair returned. "These Americans,"

he went on talking loudly and looking back at the man above him, "come down here and think they can run everything. Want to tell us to move on.

Who do they think they are anyway?"

"Sh, daddy." Alice was worried for fear her father would start a fight, even while she was secretly amused that he was accusing a fellow countryman of doing the very thing that he was guilty of. "We must get down and out so that we can find how Grace is," she added tactfully.

"Well, I'm hurrying just as fast as these Mexicans will let me," Adair answered. "I always said they were the slowest, most inconsiderate people in the world."

Adair was wrong in what he said, and he knew it. As he was now sputtering about them being inconsiderate, so often he had sputtered because of their patient consideration for other people. Then he had said that they were too polite.

However, Adair prided himself on his willingness to change his mind.

"Only dunces never contradict themselves," he often said.

Now, Alice and the girls were themselves moving along as fast as they could behind him, so, though he continued to mutter and even brandish his cane at others whom he suspected of calling at him in Spanish, he was soon safely out in the aisle and they all hurried up the stairs and out.

"O-o-ooh, but that was close," Laura's eyes were dancing at the recollection of the scene in the stands as she and Nan stepped out into the street.

"Wasn't it though?" Nan was laughing too, now, though at the time, she, like Alice, had been worried for fear Adair would come to blows with the American.

"Two Americans come to blows at a bullfight," Laura said, "and the bullfight is forgotten."