Part 4 (2/2)

”Get along with Bess!” Nan exclaimed, ”if you had ever heard what Bess said about you that night, you would have been surprised that she ever spoke to you again.”

”What did you say, Bess?” Laura looked positively impish as she looked at Bess's reflection in the mirror.

”Oh, I don't remember.” Bess was obviously concealing the truth.

”You do too,” Amelia joined in as she wound the pretty little travelling clock that had been given her the week before.

”If you don't tell, I will,” Nan was enjoying the situation as much as the rest, for she saw that Bess was not really embarra.s.sed.

”Go ahead then and see if I care,” Bess retorted, giving a few final strokes to her hair.

”Well, you said,” Nan began slowly, ”that that homely red-headed Polk girl was just as mean as she could be!”

”Did she say that?” Laura laughed heartily. Even in those days she would have been the first to laugh at herself. Now she could laugh doubly, for the homely red-headed girl had, since then, blossomed out into a pretty, fair complexioned curly headed miss with a very pleasing personality.

And so the girls continued for some time to talk over events and happenings that are recounted in other books of this series until Laura turned to Nan, ”Anyway,” she said, ”if we may return to the present and Laredo, Texas, will you please tell us just how your cousin managed to extract those pa.s.ses from the authorities this afternoon? I respected his abilities to get what he wanted from the moment mother capitulated and let me come down here with what she called, 'a perfect stranger,'

but I never respected them as much as I did when I saw that white uniformed official bowing you people out of that office as though you were the President's party itself.”

”Wasn't he just grand!” Nan's eyes were alight at the recollection.

”That man was none other than a special aid to the Mexican consular office here in Laredo, and he nearly fell all over trying to help us after cousin Adair ceased his storming and told those people who he was.

I never saw anything like it in my life.

”It was 'Si, senor, this,' and 'Si, senor, that' until Alice and Walker and I began to think that we were really somebody, if only by reflected glory.”

”Well, you certainly looked like somebody very important when you came out,” Bess agreed. ”I wondered for a moment whether I had really heard allright when you went in.”

”Then you did hear us?” Nan laughed.

”All Mexico did,” Laura put in. ”Really, at first we thought another revolution was taking place. Grace here was looking around for someplace to hide herself. Amelia was clutching her watch to her with a look of determination which said as plainly as anything 'no foraging rebel is going to get this' and Rhoda looked as though she wished she had brought her trusty six shooter along. And then when we had gotten ourselves all worked up to the point of accepting the inevitable, who should come round the corner but you and Mr. Jamieson, Alice and her father!”

”You sound as though we disappointed you,” Nan remarked.

”Oh, not at all.” Laura hastened to correct this impression. ”I don't believe Mr. MacKenzie has ever disappointed anyone in his life. He just couldn't. Not with that cane, that roar, and that honesty which stops at nothing. He's a dear. Now tell us, Nan, all you know about this place we are going to.”

”I've done that a thousand times since I met you in St. Louis,” Nan responded as she pulled off her dress and slipped her arms into the lounging robe that the Lakeview Hall girls had given her at a surprise party in her honor more than a year before.

”Oh, no, you haven't,” Laura denied. ”We made you spend most of the time telling us about this angel of a cousin that appeared out of a clear sky and offered to take us all to Mexico. Doesn't sound real even now when we're here.”

”There's one thing about it,” Amelia added, ”if one can't have rich relations oneself, the next best thing in the world is to have charming friends who have them.”

”Here, here!” Laura raised a protesting hand. ”You're out of order. The first thing you know Nan will be thinking we're fond of her.”

”Oh, you old ducks,” Nan looked at them all fondly. ”Don't you know that cousin Adair knew that if he didn't invite all of you that I wouldn't come at all? Now, let's forget all of this grat.i.tude stuff. It embarra.s.ses me.”

”All right then,” Bess agreed, ”but you really haven't told Rhoda anything at all about the hacienda, Nan.”

<script>