Nan Sherwood's Summer Holidays Part 12

"Me too," Grace was really pale. "Especially when I remember the expression on that hunchback's face when he asked for you."

"What are you going to do about it?" Rhoda inquired. Generally calm, Rhoda was seriously worried now. The red-headed man had looked mean.

"Yes, what are you going to do?" Bess repeated the question. She was more troubled than any of the rest, because she had more reason than they to be suspicious.

"Come, Nan," Amelia urged, as Nan sat, silently considering. "You've got to do something."

"Oh, girls, I don't know what to do," Nan finally burst forth. "It can't be reported. The whole thing would sound silly. The purser would probably pat us on the back, tell us to be good, and warn us not to read so many detective stories. I'm afraid that there is just nothing to do but keep quiet and see what happens next, if anything. After all, it might have been a very innocent mistake."

Laura snickered. "I only hope no innocent mistakes come walking into my cabin," she said. Then she grew serious. "Really, Nan, I'm not generally a fraidy-cat, but if I were you, I would be careful and watch out for red-headed men. I can't for the life of me see why anyone in the world would be after you, but strange things do happen."

"I will be careful," Nan agreed. "Now, I wonder what that gong was I heard a few minutes ago."

"Girls, girls, girls!" It was Dr. Prescott at the doorway. "What have you been doing? Don't you know that the second gong for dinner has rung and that if you don't hurry you won't get anything to eat."

"Nothing to eat! And me so starved after the whiffs I've been getting of the fresh salt air." Laura was up and out of the room before she had finished the sentence. Amelia followed after. Ten minutes later the girls were headed down the corridor to the s.h.i.+p's dining room.

"Have you got your ticket?" Nan asked as she held up a little red card that resembled the seat stubs in a theatre.

"Ticket, what ticket?" Laura stopped short.

"The ticket for your place in the dining room." Bess was proud of this bit of knowledge.

"Why, I never had one," Laura declared. "They never even gave me one."

"Oh, yes they did," Bess a.s.sured her. "Remember, after the purser looked at our pa.s.sports when we came aboard s.h.i.+p, he sent us to a window where the dining room steward was sitting. The steward had a plan of the dining room before him, with all the tables pictured on it. He looked at us and at our pa.s.sports and then gave us this little stub. Remember?"

Laura looked perfectly blank. "What will I do now?" she asked.

"Here, you take mine," Bess was feeling generous. "Since I know just where to go, I'll go up and get another. You all start eating, though.

Don't wait for me." With this she was off to the purser's office.

"Come on, Laura." Nan took Laura's arm as the girl hesitated wondering whether, if, after all, she shouldn't get her own ticket.

"Yes, or we won't get anything to eat." Amelia was slightly impatient.

"Come, let's hurry. There doesn't seem to be anybody else around at all.

Do you know where the dining room is?" she turned to Nan with the question.

"I do," Laura answered. "It's up on Deck B. I looked in when I first came down to our cabin. Just follow me."

There was music as the girls hurried up the stairway and in through wide double doors. "Looks like a hotel dining room," Grace whispered as the chief steward came toward them.

"Your stubs, please?" he asked and then escorted them to a big round table in the center of the room, a table all their own, perfectly set for seven people.

There was a low bowl of flowers in the center and a card which read,

"To Nan Sherwood, S. S. Lincoln, c/o Chief Steward.

"May each day of your journey be more exciting and more pleasant than the one past."

"Who is it from, Nan?" Even Dr. Prescott was eager to know. She had been sitting at the table waiting for the girls to appear.

Nan turned the card over. "Why, how nice!" she exclaimed, "and how thoughtful!" Then she looked up at Dr. Prescott and the girls waiting at their places. "It is from a famous movie actress," she said rather shyly, and her face was all aglow, "whom I met once in Chicago. She's a perfectly grand person." Nan was silent as the details of that meeting rushed through her mind, as she remembered how an unfortunate encounter with Linda had brought it about. As she sat down, she wondered idly whether the summer holidays that were before her would be as exciting as those winter holidays, spent in Chicago at Grace's home, had been.

"What's happened to Elizabeth?" Dr. Prescott asked as she picked up her menu. "Not sea-sick already, I hope?"

"Far from it," Nan laughed. "Bess is too busy being an ocean traveller to even have time to think of such a thing. Really, Dr. Prescott," Nan leaned across the table and said earnestly, "you can't imagine what a kick we are getting out of all of this. It's like something girls do in story books."

"And the journey has just begun." Dr. Prescott smiled at her young charges. "It all brings my first trip--I was a little older than you are now--back to me most vividly. Now, what will we have to eat?"

"Oh-h-h, will you look at this menu," Laura spoke up now. "Not much like one of Mrs. Cupp's--" she stopped suddenly and blushed. It was hard to remember that Dr. Prescott, the head of Lakeview Hall, was present.

Laura looked up over the top of her menu, ready to apologize. But Dr.

Prescott seemed not to have heard. She seemed wholly occupied in choosing the mid-day meal. "What a brick she is!" Laura thought to herself as she, too, turned to the business at hand.

"Just one warning," Dr. Prescott cautioned before the girls turned to the table steward to give him their orders. "You eat about six times a day on the boat--" She paused as the girls gasped. "You have a big breakfast, bouillon and wafers in the middle of the morning, lunch, tea and cakes in the afternoon, dinner, and then before you go to bed, there are sandwiches and perhaps something warm to drink. If you are going to eat each time," she went on, "you'll have to be careful. Otherwise you'll be spending the hours in your stateroom. There," she finished, "that is my only lecture for the day. Now, do as you will."

So they chose--carefully, except Laura, who could not resist having both French pastry and ice-cream for desert. "Bess will never forgive me,"

she spoke up after she had ordered, "if she doesn't get here in time for this first meal on the boat."

"She ought to be here any time now," Amelia looked at her watch. "It doesn't take long to get your table card. You don't suppose they lock the dining room doors when everyone is in and that they won't let her through now?" she directed the question to Dr. Prescott.

"Why, I hardly think so." Dr. Prescott smiled. "People are coming and going all the time, you see."

"Bess will get here. Never fear." Nan spoke up confidently. "Let's eat.

She told us not to wait." As the lunch progressed, however, from soup through a dainty salad and slices of cold chicken to dessert, Nan grew uneasy.

"It is strange that she doesn't appear," she finally admitted, and was about to leave the dining room and go in search of her when Bess was ushered to the table.

"I'm sorry to be so late," Bess murmured as she sat down and unfolded her napkin, "but I couldn't help it." Her face was flushed. She looked confused and angry.

"Please don't say anything now," she begged as Nan was about to speak.

"I'm afraid I'll make a scene, if you do, but if ever I see that girl again--"

She stopped short as the steward presented her with a menu.

CHAPTER XII

A SCORE TO EVEN UP

"Now tell us what happened!" The Lakeview girls were reclining in deck chairs on the sun deck in the late afternoon. Dr. Prescott was in her stateroom, making it more presentable, she said, so it was the first opportunity to talk over Bess' experience.

Bess raised herself up and tucked the steamer rug more securely around her legs. The April breezes were fresh, and rather chilly.

"It still makes me mad," she fumed as she yanked the rug around further.