Part 15 (1/2)
”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