Part 8 (1/2)
Now, as Nan completed the job of helping Rhoda dress and Bess finished packing her bags, there was a gentle knock on the door and a gentle voice inquired, ”May I come in?” It was Alice.
”Walker's gone for father,” she said, ”And Laura's asked me to tell you that there's a train out in a half hour. Is everything ready?”
Rhoda nodded her head, but said nothing. She was trying hard now not to cry.
”So you know where cousin Adair is?” Nan looked across the room at Alice.
”No, but Walker will find him and have him here in no time at all,”
Alice replied quietly and confidently.
She had hardly finished the sentence, when those in the room heard the firm tread of Adair MacKenzie in the hall and heard his voice boom out, ”Porter, porter, come here, and take these bags.”
It was good to hear him, good to hear his decisiveness. Everyone in the room felt better as soon as he opened the door.
”Here, here, what's all this?” He looked at Rhoda's red eyes. ”Come, girl, buck up,” he patted her roughly on the shoulder. ”Ready, are you?”
”You're going by plane. It leaves in fifteen minutes and there's a taxi waiting downstairs. That red-headed girl, what's her name, got you a compartment in a train, but we've cancelled that.
”Now, that good-for-nothing newspaper friend of my daughter's is downstairs putting through a long distance call so that you can talk to your father before you leave here.
”You can tell him that this is a private plane and that it will practically drop you in your own back yard. Do they have back yards where you come from?”
Rhoda nodded. How good everyone was being to her.
”Now, now, don't thank me,” Adair MacKenzie forestalled her thanks.
”Help a nice girl like you out any time I can. Ready? You better go downstairs. You've just got time to talk to your father before you make the plane. You'll find everything comfortable there.
”Come, you, Nan,” he motioned to his cousin, ”You're the only one that can come along with us. Don't want a lot of fuss. See the rest of you later.” With this, he hurried Nan and Rhoda out of the room and down the elevator so quickly that Rhoda, in doing things, got control of herself, just as Adair MacKenzie had known she would.
The talk with her father was comforting, but not encouraging, and it was with a heavy, heavy heart that Rhoda Hammond waved good-by to her friends at the airport a few minutes later.
Nan stifled a sob as the plane taxied across the field and rose into the air. Adair MacKenzie looked down on her. ”There, there, child,” he said gently, ”Things will turn out all right and we'll make this up to the girl sometime later.”
Nan caught her upper lip between her teeth and tried to smile up at him. ”Please, please, make everything right.” It was a prayer that she breathed.
CHAPTER IX
RESOLUTIONS
It was a sad little party that drew out of Laredo that afternoon. The thoughts of Nan and her friends were all with Rhoda. At every turn they wondered where she was and what she was doing.
Only Adair MacKenzie's insistence had made them depart from the city on the border at all.
”Got to be on our way now,” he had said brusquely when he and Nan had driven up to the hotel after seeing Rhoda off. ”Now, get busy, you,” he ordered the girls after they had heard the details of Rhoda's departure from Nan. ”Can't stay around here any longer. Sick and tired of this place. Nothing but a hole in the wall. Don't like it. Don't like the people. We're leaving. Get busy, I say.” He tapped his cane impatiently on the floor of the hotel veranda. ”I mean you and you and you.” He pointed with it to each separate member of the party.
The girls jumped. Alice jumped. And Walker Jamieson jumped. Everyone got busy and in an hour's time they were all sitting on the veranda, dressed for traveling, waiting for the car to come.
”What are you doing here?” Adair MacKenzie appeared in the doorway.