CHAPTER XVIA STRANGE ENCOUNTERThe next morning was a confusion of breakfast, packing, and hurrying off to the station.“I can never tell you, Miss Ashton,” said Nancy before they left the apartment, “how very much I have enjoyed the trip, and how much I appreciate all you have done to make things pleasant for us.”“And how glad we are that you asked us to go in the first place,” added Jeanette. “I too certainly had a wonderful time.”“I never had so much fun in my life,” said Martha. “You have all got me spoiled by this trip, for a summer at home or for an excursion with anyone else. I’m wedded to you for life, vacationally speaking.”“It is a real pleasure to take you girls anywhere,” said Miss Ashton, in reply; “not only because you so thoroughly appreciate what one does, and enjoy it, but because you are good company. It is not often that a chaperon can boast of a wholly congenial party of girls who keep sweet-tempered, pleased with what they see, and who have such consideration for her. I hope we shall be able to go somewhere again, sometime.”“And so do we,” was the echo.“And the lovely picture that you girls gave me will serve to remind me constantly of the land of Evangeline, and our good times there.”The big South Station was filled with hurrying people when they entered, but Jim and the other two boys who had been watching for them were at their side almost at once.“The train is made up here,” said Jim, giving Nancy’s bags to a redcap; “so you can get on immediately.”It was a very long train; and they walked some distance along the platform before they reached their car. The boys settled the party in their chairs, and presented magazines, fruit, boxes of candy, and books; then sat down to visit until it was time to get off.“My goodness,” cried Martha, looking at the offerings, “you boys must have thought we were going to be a week on the train.”“Oh, no,” replied Griff quickly. “We gave them so you wouldn’t be weak.”“Terrible! Terrible!” groaned John Pierce. “Don’t give us any more like that.”They remained on the train until the very last minute; so the final good-bys consisted of hasty handclasps and promises to write.Their last glimpse of the Boston station from the car window showed the three boys and Miss Ashton waving to them as the train pulled out. The girls were very quiet for a long time.“Well,” sighed Jeanette, after the train had passed Worchester, “it’s over.”“The actual trip itself,” replied Martha; “but perhaps there might be a sequel to it. Who knows?”“Was it all you expected, Jane?” asked Nancy, rousing from a reverie.“Yes, it was; and more than I anticipated, in some respects. What about you, Nan?”“Oh, I loved it! Yet how soon even such a pleasant trip falls into the background. Nova Scotia seems to be so very far away already.”“It is,” said the materialistic Martha. “Miles and miles.”“It always seems a pity,” said Jeanette, “that we can’t enjoy the present more while we still have it, on trips especially. We are always looking forward to getting to the next place, or doing the next thing, and so lose the full joy of what we are doing at the time. As our friend Horace says, ‘Carpe diem.’”“There was a lot of good sense in his poems, if he was a bit gloomy,” said Martha, as if she were announcing some hitherto unknown truth; and she wondered why the girls laughed.“But it’s true, as you say, Janie,” said Nancy, “and then afterwards, when we think it over, we realize what we have missed, and wish we had enjoyed it more intensely while we had it.”“Next time, I’m going to try to do that,” resolved Jeanette.“This vacation was rather unreal, anyhow,” said Nancy, after another long silence.“What do you mean?” inquired Martha.“Didn’t Nova Scotia seem to you a kind of unreal, visionary country?”“I think I see,” said Jeanette slowly. “It was a sort of phantom land.”“Exactly.”“You two are too poetical,” observed Martha. “It seemed real enough to me.”“Martha,” said Nancy, upon their return from the dining car, after lunch, “can you keep a secret?”“Sure. Why?”“Because I want to tell you one.”“Go ahead.”“It’s—about Jim—and me——”“Oh, that! I don’t need to be told about that. I don’t thinkthatwas a secret to anyone.”Nancy laughed, a bit embarrassed.“I didn’t think you noticed.”“Couldn’t help noticing something that even a blind man could see.”“But nothing at all is to be settled until after Commencement, Mart; and besides our parents, Miss Ashton, and Janie and you, I don’t want anyone to know or even suspect.”“Why, if I may ask?”After Nancy finished her explanation, which she found it much harder to make to Martha than to Jeanette, Martha replied, “I see. I guess maybe you’re right. Anyway, of course you can count on me to keep it quiet.”“Thanks a lot, Mart.”The beautiful Berkshires had slipped away somewhere behind the train, and they were rapidly approaching Albany, when Martha said hesitatingly:“Since confidences are in order, I suppose I should do my part.”“Martha! What?” demanded Nancy, excitedly.“Oh, don’t get your hopes up like that. My news is not nearly so interesting as yours. But you remember, you wondered in Yarmouth when I had bought my amethyst ring?”“Yes,” said Nancy, “because I thought it odd that you had not mentioned it before.”“I felt rather queer about it, to tell the truth. The day we sailed, Mr. Pierce and I were strolling about, window shopping, and I foolishly pointed out the ring and said how crazy I was over it. He immediately went into the shop and bought it for me. I absolutely refused to accept such a gift, for I knew that you and Jeanette disapprove of girls taking gifts of any value from men——”“But Mart,” interrupted Nancy, “what have our opinions got to do with it?”“Haven’t you been my mentors ever since we started out together in Eastport?” demanded Martha.“Why, yes, I suppose so; but you certainly must have some ideas of your own on such subjects.”“Well, I know most girls take anything a man gives them, and seem not to give it a thought.”“I know they do; and they laugh at us for having what they call such old-fashioned notions; but I don’t care. In this, I think the custom of my mother’s day, of accepting only flowers, books, or something like that, is the nicer one; and therefore I adopted it for mine, and shall stick to it,” decreed Nancy decidedly.“But what could I do?” wailed Martha, “when he just forced it upon me? He said it was just a little souvenir of the country; that he had been intending to get me something to take home, and it was better for the thing to be some article I liked a lot than just some trinket or other that he might pick out.”“In such a case I really don’t know what you could have done, Mart,” said Jeanette, thoughtfully. “After all, those rings were not so awfully expensive. If he had taken you to the theater a couple of times in a city like New York, and to dinner afterwards, the expense would have been more than the cost of the ring.”“Yes, that’s true,” agreed Nancy. “I think I just wouldn’t worry about it, Mart. You did your best; so wear the ring, and enjoy it, and forget about the rest of it.”“Anything else you’d like to tell us?” suggested Nancy shyly, after a pause.“Nothing much,” replied Martha. “He asked me if he might come to see me, if he could get away for a few days sometime, and I said he might.”“At college?” asked Jeanette.“I don’t know. There would be no objections. Would there?”“None at all. Many of the Juniors and Seniors, you know, have visitors over the week-end, or go off to dances or house parties, though the girls of our own crowd have not done much in that line.”“You like Mr. Pierce, don’t you, Mart?” asked Nancy.“Yes, I do sometimes——”“And other times?” prompted Jeanette.“I don’t like him a bit! He’s awfully stern, and so dictatorial when he wants to be; and——”“You’re not used to it,” concluded Nancy, laughing.“No; and I’m not sure I could ever get used to it, either; or that I want to.”“Albany!” called the porter. “Stop of forty minutes.”“Let’s get off,” proposed Martha. “It will be a long wait on the train.”“If we can keep Nan right between us all the time, I will,” said Jeanette; “but I refuse to let her out of my sight.”“I want a soda,” decided Martha, as they strolled along the platform with the other passengers. “There’s plenty of time.”So they hurried on through the crowd of trainmen, redcaps, travelers, dodged between baggage trucks, around piles of freight, and down the stairs to the station proper.“We were lots farther out than I thought,” observed Jeanette, as they perched on stools before the soda fountain.While they were waiting for their orders to be filled, Nancy’s eyes fell upon a man who was lounging on one of the near-by benches. His clothes had once been good, but were now very shabby, and he looked as if he might be slightly the worse for liquor.“His face looks familiar,” she thought. “I wonder where I have seen him before.”She puzzled over the likeness for a few minutes, and then gave it up. After all, there were so many similar types. One was always saying, “That person looks so much like so-and-so.”While the girls were enjoying their sodas, the man, whose attention had been attracted to them when they first approached the counter, eyed them attentively. As they paid the check and turned away, he got up, and moving across the short space between them, stood directly in their way. They were about to walk around him, when he spoke.“Say,” he demanded, in a low tone, “what did you do with my sister?”“Your sister?” repeated Nancy, in astonishment.“Come on! Don’t notice him,” whispered Jeanette, trying to urge them on their way.“Now just you wait a minute,” he persisted. “Don’t try to get away from me. There’s something I want to find out and you’ve got to tell me.”Jeanette looked wildly around to see if she could see a policeman, but there were none in sight.“We know nothing about any of your affairs,” said Nancy firmly.The man laughed unpleasantly.“Maybe you don’t know me, but I know you; and your friends too. You’ve done me a couple of ill turns, and now to pay up a little you can tell me where Georgia is.”Now Nancy knew where she had seen him before. The peculiar acting man in front of them in the theater that day so long ago; Georgia in tears in the lobby; the girls taking her to tea, and making up enough to send her home; the meeting with Georgia in the store at Christmas time; her months of boarding at Janie’s house. All this flashed through her mind, followed immediately by the picture of a man bending over her dresser one night at college; his capture by means of her flashlight; the room filled with girls; Tim’s entrance to take the man into custody.“Georgia!” gasped Jeanette.“Yes, Georgia,” repeated the man. “You tried to coax her away from me, by getting her to live at your house; but I fixed that! You didn’t want her any more after you found out about the brooch. Did you?”The girls were so surprised and shocked by the man’s words that they were absolutely speechless.“She came back with me for a while after that,” he continued, “and then gave me the slip again. Now what I want to know is, where is she? Where have you hidden her?”“We know nothing at all about Georgia’s whereabouts,” said Nancy, finding her voice at last. “We only wish we did. We too have been looking for her for a long time.”“Is that the truth?” demanded the man, looking sharply at her.“It certainly is. Now let us pass at once.”Seeing a policeman crossing the station, the man slunk off, and was soon lost in the crowd; and the girls hurried out, and up the stairs toward the train.“My goodness!” panted Martha, as they almost ran along the platform. “I was scared.”“I wasn’t scared; for there were too many people all around us; but I was almost stunned by the unexpectedness of the encounter,” said Nancy.“Poor, poor Georgia,” commented Jeanette, “to have such a brother! What do you——”“Our car!” cried Martha. “It’s gone.”“It can’t be,” protested Nancy. “That is our engine.”“Well, you can see for yourself that the car ‘Elaine’ isn’t anywhere around here,” persisted Martha, excitedly.“They are switching,” said Jeanette, after a careful survey of the scene. “‘Elaine’ is probably farther out in the yards. We’ll walk on a ways.”“She’s gone. She’s certainly gone,” repeated Martha, after they had proceeded for some distance, and still saw no signs of the runaway car.“There it is!” cried Nancy, pointing across several tracks, where, far ahead, almost at the bridge over the Hudson River, stood “Elaine.”“How in the name of fortune can we get to her?” demanded Martha.“The answer to that,” said Jeanette, smiling, “is that you can’t, at present.”“Unless you want to climb over those two trains,” added Nancy. “They’ll probably switch again, and bring her farther in.”They stood watching, and Martha breathed more freely when an engine soon picked up the lost “Elaine” and brought her in near the platform where the girls were waiting. Soon they were able to get on board again.“Now that the excitement is over,” said Nancy, as they settled down in their chairs for the rest of the trip, “let’s discuss our strange encounter. Mart did so much dancing around out on the platform that we had no chance to talk about it.”“Well, I didn’t want to get left,” protested Martha.“Of course wedid,” laughed Nancy.“Can you figure out the mystery at all. Nan?” asked Jeanette.“No, Janie, I really can’t, that is in detail. We know now that this man whom we first saw that day in the theater is Georgia’s brother; and that he is a—a—” she hesitated, not liking to say the word.“A thief!” prompted Martha, who had no such scruples. “And what did he mean by saying that you had done him a couple of ill turns?”“First, in befriending Georgia, I suppose,” replied Nancy slowly, “since that took her away from him. And second, for turning him over to Tim that night at college——”“Oh,” squealed Martha, “washethe burglar that you captured with the flashlight?”“Yes.”“You realize, Nan, judging by what he just said, that he was responsible for the brooch being found in Georgia's pocket?” asked Jeanette.“Do you suppose he was lying? I don’t see how he could have worked it.”“Nor I, but he doubtless has ways and means of which we know nothing; and I’m just as sure as sure—and always have been—that Georgia was not guilty.”“So am I; and I wish more than ever, now, that we could find her,” replied Nancy.“Perhaps if we advertised?” suggested Jeanette.“You might. But don’t expect any results; for there are so many papers, and so many cities. She might not even be in this country now.”“What about the brooch story!” asked Martha. “I never heard that!”“No, we never told it, and never intended to; but since you have accidentally heard part of it, you may as well learn the rest,” replied Jeanette.Jeanette went on to tell her briefly how, after Georgia had been living with them for some months, and had been left alone for the week-end, a valuable brooch of Mrs. Grant's had been found in Georgia's pocket under very puzzling circumstances, and that, immediately after, Georgia had mysteriously disappeared.“How very uncomfortable for all of you,” was Martha’s comment, when Jeanette had finished her explanation. “Why don't you tell everybody you know,” she proposed, after a moment’s thought, “that you want to find Georgia! Just give them a description of her, and tell them to be on the lookout for such a person. You needn't tell them why you want her.”The girls smiled skeptically over her suggestion.“I'll ask John—Mr. Pierce anyhow,” she persisted. “He meets such a lot of people.”“First call for dinner. Dining car forward,” called a waiter, passing through the car.“Let’s go in right away,” proposed Martha, rising promptly. “If we don’t, we’ll be standing in line later. We had a very light lunch, you know,” she added, as Jeanette smiled. “And I’ll have to be leaving you in about an hour.”So they went in to the dining car, and lingered over their last meal together on the trip; talking over the happenings in detail, as perhaps only a trio of college girls can.When Martha’s station was reached, they bade her good-by until the opening of college; and by that time they were so tired and sleepy, that they dozed until their own station was called.“Just think,” observed Nancy, as they walked along the platform, “the next time we come here we’ll be starting out for our last year at Roxford. Our senior year, Janie. It doesn’t seem possible; does it?”THE END*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOKNANCY PEMBROKE IN NOVA SCOTIA***
CHAPTER XVI
A STRANGE ENCOUNTER
The next morning was a confusion of breakfast, packing, and hurrying off to the station.
“I can never tell you, Miss Ashton,” said Nancy before they left the apartment, “how very much I have enjoyed the trip, and how much I appreciate all you have done to make things pleasant for us.”
“And how glad we are that you asked us to go in the first place,” added Jeanette. “I too certainly had a wonderful time.”
“I never had so much fun in my life,” said Martha. “You have all got me spoiled by this trip, for a summer at home or for an excursion with anyone else. I’m wedded to you for life, vacationally speaking.”
“It is a real pleasure to take you girls anywhere,” said Miss Ashton, in reply; “not only because you so thoroughly appreciate what one does, and enjoy it, but because you are good company. It is not often that a chaperon can boast of a wholly congenial party of girls who keep sweet-tempered, pleased with what they see, and who have such consideration for her. I hope we shall be able to go somewhere again, sometime.”
“And so do we,” was the echo.
“And the lovely picture that you girls gave me will serve to remind me constantly of the land of Evangeline, and our good times there.”
The big South Station was filled with hurrying people when they entered, but Jim and the other two boys who had been watching for them were at their side almost at once.
“The train is made up here,” said Jim, giving Nancy’s bags to a redcap; “so you can get on immediately.”
It was a very long train; and they walked some distance along the platform before they reached their car. The boys settled the party in their chairs, and presented magazines, fruit, boxes of candy, and books; then sat down to visit until it was time to get off.
“My goodness,” cried Martha, looking at the offerings, “you boys must have thought we were going to be a week on the train.”
“Oh, no,” replied Griff quickly. “We gave them so you wouldn’t be weak.”
“Terrible! Terrible!” groaned John Pierce. “Don’t give us any more like that.”
They remained on the train until the very last minute; so the final good-bys consisted of hasty handclasps and promises to write.
Their last glimpse of the Boston station from the car window showed the three boys and Miss Ashton waving to them as the train pulled out. The girls were very quiet for a long time.
“Well,” sighed Jeanette, after the train had passed Worchester, “it’s over.”
“The actual trip itself,” replied Martha; “but perhaps there might be a sequel to it. Who knows?”
“Was it all you expected, Jane?” asked Nancy, rousing from a reverie.
“Yes, it was; and more than I anticipated, in some respects. What about you, Nan?”
“Oh, I loved it! Yet how soon even such a pleasant trip falls into the background. Nova Scotia seems to be so very far away already.”
“It is,” said the materialistic Martha. “Miles and miles.”
“It always seems a pity,” said Jeanette, “that we can’t enjoy the present more while we still have it, on trips especially. We are always looking forward to getting to the next place, or doing the next thing, and so lose the full joy of what we are doing at the time. As our friend Horace says, ‘Carpe diem.’”
“There was a lot of good sense in his poems, if he was a bit gloomy,” said Martha, as if she were announcing some hitherto unknown truth; and she wondered why the girls laughed.
“But it’s true, as you say, Janie,” said Nancy, “and then afterwards, when we think it over, we realize what we have missed, and wish we had enjoyed it more intensely while we had it.”
“Next time, I’m going to try to do that,” resolved Jeanette.
“This vacation was rather unreal, anyhow,” said Nancy, after another long silence.
“What do you mean?” inquired Martha.
“Didn’t Nova Scotia seem to you a kind of unreal, visionary country?”
“I think I see,” said Jeanette slowly. “It was a sort of phantom land.”
“Exactly.”
“You two are too poetical,” observed Martha. “It seemed real enough to me.”
“Martha,” said Nancy, upon their return from the dining car, after lunch, “can you keep a secret?”
“Sure. Why?”
“Because I want to tell you one.”
“Go ahead.”
“It’s—about Jim—and me——”
“Oh, that! I don’t need to be told about that. I don’t thinkthatwas a secret to anyone.”
Nancy laughed, a bit embarrassed.
“I didn’t think you noticed.”
“Couldn’t help noticing something that even a blind man could see.”
“But nothing at all is to be settled until after Commencement, Mart; and besides our parents, Miss Ashton, and Janie and you, I don’t want anyone to know or even suspect.”
“Why, if I may ask?”
After Nancy finished her explanation, which she found it much harder to make to Martha than to Jeanette, Martha replied, “I see. I guess maybe you’re right. Anyway, of course you can count on me to keep it quiet.”
“Thanks a lot, Mart.”
The beautiful Berkshires had slipped away somewhere behind the train, and they were rapidly approaching Albany, when Martha said hesitatingly:
“Since confidences are in order, I suppose I should do my part.”
“Martha! What?” demanded Nancy, excitedly.
“Oh, don’t get your hopes up like that. My news is not nearly so interesting as yours. But you remember, you wondered in Yarmouth when I had bought my amethyst ring?”
“Yes,” said Nancy, “because I thought it odd that you had not mentioned it before.”
“I felt rather queer about it, to tell the truth. The day we sailed, Mr. Pierce and I were strolling about, window shopping, and I foolishly pointed out the ring and said how crazy I was over it. He immediately went into the shop and bought it for me. I absolutely refused to accept such a gift, for I knew that you and Jeanette disapprove of girls taking gifts of any value from men——”
“But Mart,” interrupted Nancy, “what have our opinions got to do with it?”
“Haven’t you been my mentors ever since we started out together in Eastport?” demanded Martha.
“Why, yes, I suppose so; but you certainly must have some ideas of your own on such subjects.”
“Well, I know most girls take anything a man gives them, and seem not to give it a thought.”
“I know they do; and they laugh at us for having what they call such old-fashioned notions; but I don’t care. In this, I think the custom of my mother’s day, of accepting only flowers, books, or something like that, is the nicer one; and therefore I adopted it for mine, and shall stick to it,” decreed Nancy decidedly.
“But what could I do?” wailed Martha, “when he just forced it upon me? He said it was just a little souvenir of the country; that he had been intending to get me something to take home, and it was better for the thing to be some article I liked a lot than just some trinket or other that he might pick out.”
“In such a case I really don’t know what you could have done, Mart,” said Jeanette, thoughtfully. “After all, those rings were not so awfully expensive. If he had taken you to the theater a couple of times in a city like New York, and to dinner afterwards, the expense would have been more than the cost of the ring.”
“Yes, that’s true,” agreed Nancy. “I think I just wouldn’t worry about it, Mart. You did your best; so wear the ring, and enjoy it, and forget about the rest of it.”
“Anything else you’d like to tell us?” suggested Nancy shyly, after a pause.
“Nothing much,” replied Martha. “He asked me if he might come to see me, if he could get away for a few days sometime, and I said he might.”
“At college?” asked Jeanette.
“I don’t know. There would be no objections. Would there?”
“None at all. Many of the Juniors and Seniors, you know, have visitors over the week-end, or go off to dances or house parties, though the girls of our own crowd have not done much in that line.”
“You like Mr. Pierce, don’t you, Mart?” asked Nancy.
“Yes, I do sometimes——”
“And other times?” prompted Jeanette.
“I don’t like him a bit! He’s awfully stern, and so dictatorial when he wants to be; and——”
“You’re not used to it,” concluded Nancy, laughing.
“No; and I’m not sure I could ever get used to it, either; or that I want to.”
“Albany!” called the porter. “Stop of forty minutes.”
“Let’s get off,” proposed Martha. “It will be a long wait on the train.”
“If we can keep Nan right between us all the time, I will,” said Jeanette; “but I refuse to let her out of my sight.”
“I want a soda,” decided Martha, as they strolled along the platform with the other passengers. “There’s plenty of time.”
So they hurried on through the crowd of trainmen, redcaps, travelers, dodged between baggage trucks, around piles of freight, and down the stairs to the station proper.
“We were lots farther out than I thought,” observed Jeanette, as they perched on stools before the soda fountain.
While they were waiting for their orders to be filled, Nancy’s eyes fell upon a man who was lounging on one of the near-by benches. His clothes had once been good, but were now very shabby, and he looked as if he might be slightly the worse for liquor.
“His face looks familiar,” she thought. “I wonder where I have seen him before.”
She puzzled over the likeness for a few minutes, and then gave it up. After all, there were so many similar types. One was always saying, “That person looks so much like so-and-so.”
While the girls were enjoying their sodas, the man, whose attention had been attracted to them when they first approached the counter, eyed them attentively. As they paid the check and turned away, he got up, and moving across the short space between them, stood directly in their way. They were about to walk around him, when he spoke.
“Say,” he demanded, in a low tone, “what did you do with my sister?”
“Your sister?” repeated Nancy, in astonishment.
“Come on! Don’t notice him,” whispered Jeanette, trying to urge them on their way.
“Now just you wait a minute,” he persisted. “Don’t try to get away from me. There’s something I want to find out and you’ve got to tell me.”
Jeanette looked wildly around to see if she could see a policeman, but there were none in sight.
“We know nothing about any of your affairs,” said Nancy firmly.
The man laughed unpleasantly.
“Maybe you don’t know me, but I know you; and your friends too. You’ve done me a couple of ill turns, and now to pay up a little you can tell me where Georgia is.”
Now Nancy knew where she had seen him before. The peculiar acting man in front of them in the theater that day so long ago; Georgia in tears in the lobby; the girls taking her to tea, and making up enough to send her home; the meeting with Georgia in the store at Christmas time; her months of boarding at Janie’s house. All this flashed through her mind, followed immediately by the picture of a man bending over her dresser one night at college; his capture by means of her flashlight; the room filled with girls; Tim’s entrance to take the man into custody.
“Georgia!” gasped Jeanette.
“Yes, Georgia,” repeated the man. “You tried to coax her away from me, by getting her to live at your house; but I fixed that! You didn’t want her any more after you found out about the brooch. Did you?”
The girls were so surprised and shocked by the man’s words that they were absolutely speechless.
“She came back with me for a while after that,” he continued, “and then gave me the slip again. Now what I want to know is, where is she? Where have you hidden her?”
“We know nothing at all about Georgia’s whereabouts,” said Nancy, finding her voice at last. “We only wish we did. We too have been looking for her for a long time.”
“Is that the truth?” demanded the man, looking sharply at her.
“It certainly is. Now let us pass at once.”
Seeing a policeman crossing the station, the man slunk off, and was soon lost in the crowd; and the girls hurried out, and up the stairs toward the train.
“My goodness!” panted Martha, as they almost ran along the platform. “I was scared.”
“I wasn’t scared; for there were too many people all around us; but I was almost stunned by the unexpectedness of the encounter,” said Nancy.
“Poor, poor Georgia,” commented Jeanette, “to have such a brother! What do you——”
“Our car!” cried Martha. “It’s gone.”
“It can’t be,” protested Nancy. “That is our engine.”
“Well, you can see for yourself that the car ‘Elaine’ isn’t anywhere around here,” persisted Martha, excitedly.
“They are switching,” said Jeanette, after a careful survey of the scene. “‘Elaine’ is probably farther out in the yards. We’ll walk on a ways.”
“She’s gone. She’s certainly gone,” repeated Martha, after they had proceeded for some distance, and still saw no signs of the runaway car.
“There it is!” cried Nancy, pointing across several tracks, where, far ahead, almost at the bridge over the Hudson River, stood “Elaine.”
“How in the name of fortune can we get to her?” demanded Martha.
“The answer to that,” said Jeanette, smiling, “is that you can’t, at present.”
“Unless you want to climb over those two trains,” added Nancy. “They’ll probably switch again, and bring her farther in.”
They stood watching, and Martha breathed more freely when an engine soon picked up the lost “Elaine” and brought her in near the platform where the girls were waiting. Soon they were able to get on board again.
“Now that the excitement is over,” said Nancy, as they settled down in their chairs for the rest of the trip, “let’s discuss our strange encounter. Mart did so much dancing around out on the platform that we had no chance to talk about it.”
“Well, I didn’t want to get left,” protested Martha.
“Of course wedid,” laughed Nancy.
“Can you figure out the mystery at all. Nan?” asked Jeanette.
“No, Janie, I really can’t, that is in detail. We know now that this man whom we first saw that day in the theater is Georgia’s brother; and that he is a—a—” she hesitated, not liking to say the word.
“A thief!” prompted Martha, who had no such scruples. “And what did he mean by saying that you had done him a couple of ill turns?”
“First, in befriending Georgia, I suppose,” replied Nancy slowly, “since that took her away from him. And second, for turning him over to Tim that night at college——”
“Oh,” squealed Martha, “washethe burglar that you captured with the flashlight?”
“Yes.”
“You realize, Nan, judging by what he just said, that he was responsible for the brooch being found in Georgia's pocket?” asked Jeanette.
“Do you suppose he was lying? I don’t see how he could have worked it.”
“Nor I, but he doubtless has ways and means of which we know nothing; and I’m just as sure as sure—and always have been—that Georgia was not guilty.”
“So am I; and I wish more than ever, now, that we could find her,” replied Nancy.
“Perhaps if we advertised?” suggested Jeanette.
“You might. But don’t expect any results; for there are so many papers, and so many cities. She might not even be in this country now.”
“What about the brooch story!” asked Martha. “I never heard that!”
“No, we never told it, and never intended to; but since you have accidentally heard part of it, you may as well learn the rest,” replied Jeanette.
Jeanette went on to tell her briefly how, after Georgia had been living with them for some months, and had been left alone for the week-end, a valuable brooch of Mrs. Grant's had been found in Georgia's pocket under very puzzling circumstances, and that, immediately after, Georgia had mysteriously disappeared.
“How very uncomfortable for all of you,” was Martha’s comment, when Jeanette had finished her explanation. “Why don't you tell everybody you know,” she proposed, after a moment’s thought, “that you want to find Georgia! Just give them a description of her, and tell them to be on the lookout for such a person. You needn't tell them why you want her.”
The girls smiled skeptically over her suggestion.
“I'll ask John—Mr. Pierce anyhow,” she persisted. “He meets such a lot of people.”
“First call for dinner. Dining car forward,” called a waiter, passing through the car.
“Let’s go in right away,” proposed Martha, rising promptly. “If we don’t, we’ll be standing in line later. We had a very light lunch, you know,” she added, as Jeanette smiled. “And I’ll have to be leaving you in about an hour.”
So they went in to the dining car, and lingered over their last meal together on the trip; talking over the happenings in detail, as perhaps only a trio of college girls can.
When Martha’s station was reached, they bade her good-by until the opening of college; and by that time they were so tired and sleepy, that they dozed until their own station was called.
“Just think,” observed Nancy, as they walked along the platform, “the next time we come here we’ll be starting out for our last year at Roxford. Our senior year, Janie. It doesn’t seem possible; does it?”
THE END
*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOKNANCY PEMBROKE IN NOVA SCOTIA***