Part 13 (1/2)
Had it not been for Nan, Bess would never have found her way to Room Seven, Corridor Four, she was so blinded with angry tears. The room they were to occupy together was up two flights of broad stairs, and had a wide window overlooking the lake. Nan knew this to be the fact at once, for she went to the open window, heard the soughing of the uneasy waves on the pebbly beach far below, and saw the red, winking eye of the lighthouse at the mouth of Freeling Inlet.
”This is a lovely room, Bess,” she declared, as she snapped on the electric light.
Bess banged the door viciously. ”I don't care how nice it is! I sha'n't stay here!” she cried.
”Oh, pshaw, Bess! you don't mean that,” returned Nan.
”Yes, I do--so now! I won't remain to be insulted by these girls! My mother won't want me to. I shall write her----”
”You _wouldn't_?” cried Nan, in horror.
”Why wouldn't I?”
”You don't mean to say you would trouble and worry your mother about such a thing, just as soon as you get here?”
”We--ell!”
”I wouldn't do that for anything,” Nan urged. ”And, besides, I don't think the girls meant any real harm.”
”That homely, red-headed Polk girl is just as mean as she can be!”
”But she has to take jokes herself about her red hair.”
”I don't care!” grumbled Bess. ”She has no right to play such mean tricks on _me_. Why did she tell me to take that horrid old lunch box in to supper?”
”Because she foresaw just what would happen,” chuckled Nan.
”Oh! you can laugh!” cried Bess.
”We should not have been so gullible,” Nan declared. ”That was a perfectly ridiculous story Laura told us about the food being so poor and scanty, and we should not have believed it.”
Bess was staring at her with angry sparks in her eyes. She suddenly burst out with:
”That old lunch box! If it hadn't been for you, Nan Sherwood, we would not have brought it here with us.”
”Why----Is that quite right, Bess?” gently suggested Nan.
”Yes, it is!” snapped her chum. ”If you had taken my advice you would have flung it out of the window and eaten in the dining car in a proper manner.”
There were a good many retorts Nan might have made. She wanted to laugh, too. It did seem so ridiculous for Bess to carry on so over a silly joke. She was making a mountain out of a molehill.
But it would be worse than useless to argue the point, and to laugh would surely make her chum more bitter--perhaps open a real breach between them that not even time could heal.
So Nan, in her own inimitable, loving way, put both arms suddenly about Bess and kissed her. ”I'm awfully sorry, dear; forgive me,” she said, just as though the fault was all hers.
Bess broke down and wet Nan's shoulder with her angry tears. But they were a relief. She sobbed out at last:
”I hope I'll never, _never_ see a shoe-box lunch again! I just do----”