Part 3 (1/2)
At last Miss Campbell burst out:
”I don't believe it. That nice brown-eyed boy!”
”Neither do we,” echoed the others. ”It's impossible.”
This somewhat relieved their feelings, and when they reached the town where they had planned to spend the night they were talking cheerfully.
While they were freshening up for supper half an hour later, Miss Campbell felt in her black silk reticule for her purse, Billie having paid all bills that day with the ready change with which she had provided herself.
”My dears,” gasped the poor little lady, ”where is it?”
”What, Cousin Helen,” cried Billie, frightened at the expressions of doubt and agitation which chased themselves across her relative's face.
”My purse, child! My silver-mounted Morocco purse. I thought I had it in my reticule, but where is it?”
They emptied the reticule. They looked in their own handbags and even went to the garage and searched the Comet. But Miss Campbell's purse containing fifty dollars was gone.
”At any rate, Billie,” whispered Nancy that night when they had stretched themselves wearily on the hardish bed in the hotel, ”at any rate, he had the nicest, kindest brown eyes I ever saw.”
”Even now,” answered Billie, ”there may be some mistake.”
CHAPTER III.-IN SEARCH OF A DINNER.
”This is a.s.suredly a land of peace and plenty,” observed Miss Campbell, somewhat sleepily, as she leaned back in the seat and half closed her eyes.
”Meaning 'too much of a muchness,' Cousin Helen,” teased Billie. ”Are you beginning to yearn already for something to happen?”
”My dear, how can you suggest such things?” cried her relative opening her blue eyes wide in an innocent protest of such an accusation. ”An aged spinster like me craving excitement! What an idea!”
”But Iowa is not thrilling,” admitted Elinor. ”These endless cornfields are like a sea without s.h.i.+p and what could be duller than a sail-less ocean?”
”But there are farm houses,” put in Mary.
”Just stupid wooden buildings,” answered Elinor scornfully.
The truth is our five tourists still felt the inevitable homesickness which rarely fails to come during the first few days of a long journey before one is settled into the groove of traveling. The hard beds and uninteresting food of the small hotels of the Middle West had not helped to dispel their vision of West Haven seated on its bluff looking out across the bay. Its hilly streets and comfortable old houses mellowing each year into a softer, deeper gray came back to them now with a pang.
Nancy yearned infinitely to be sitting at that moment before the driftwood fire in their sitting room while her father smoked an old black pipe and blinked at the crackling flames and her mother hummed softly to herself over her mending basket. Even Americus, her teasing brother, would have gladdened her eyes just then.
Mary was thinking of her pretty mother standing at the door of the Tea Cup Inn in a trim gray chambray dress with its white muslin fichu.
Elinor was too proud to admit even in the secret chambers of her mind the voice from home which kept calling to her across the s.p.a.ces. As for Miss Helen Campbell she could not efface from her mind a dainty little vignette of herself seated at her own breakfast table; on her head was her favorite lace breakfast cap trimmed with knots of blue ribbon and separating her from her beloved Billie across the table was the steaming silver coffee urn. This enticing picture persisted in pa.s.sing before her mental vision, perhaps because breakfast that morning had been unspeakable.
Billie also was silent. She was trying to explain to herself why this wave of homesickness had come over them. Was it the flatness and monotony of highly cultivated farm lands which they ought to admire and be proud of seeing since this vast territory had once been the home of the buffalo and the prairie dog?
”I know what's the matter with us,” she cried suddenly, breaking the long silence which had fallen on the company.
”There's nothing in the world the matter with me, child,” interrupted Miss Campbell guiltily.