Annie Roe Carr

“ When it was all over, a procession formed and passed, under the slanting rays of light that came through the big rose windows, to the wide open doors and then out, where all London waited to sing and shout, “May the King live forever! Long live the King!”
“I’ll never forget it,” Nan said to her friends, her Lakeview Hall friends and Jeanie, Hetty, and Maureen at the tea that followed. It was the tea that had been planned so long before on the boat, and was given now by Hetty’s grandmother in honor of Nan so that all might hear of the wonderful things that had been happening. ”

“ Everyone shook hands with everyone else and the girls that weren’t going were so lifted up by the excitement that they hardly knew who was going and who was not. In the commotion, Rhoda somehow or other managed to pour the tea, and Amelia, Bess, Nan, Laura, and Grace to pass the sandwiches and olives and pickles and cakes and nuts and candies, but no one, as Rhoda dolefully remarked afterwards, knew what they were eating. ”

“ Amelia asked Laura as the two walked down the corridor of the dormitory after working their way out of the confusion that followed Nan’s breaking in on their secret meeting.
“She’s pretty smart,” Laura answered. “We’ll never be sure but I think that Rhoda saved the day.”
“The poise that girl has!” Amelia admired. “Every once in a while she does something with such grace and tact that you can just feel the generations of good breeding that are in back of her. She always knows what to say and when to say it. ”

“ Nan looked around and immediately was all contrition, for Bess’s eyes were full of tears.
“Why, Bess, darling, forgive me. I’m nothing but a thoughtless old meany.” So saying, she [2] wiped Bess’s tears away and sat down beside her.
Bess caught her lip between her teeth and shook her head as she fought for self-control. “I’m just an old silly myself,” she half apologized. “But I can hardly bear the thought of your going so far away from all of us for a whole summer. And it’s true you are going, Nan, as true as the fact that Walter Mason cut in on more than half your dances tonight.” ”

“ Scotch hunchback had come forth several mornings before, she walked very quietly and listened attentively. She neither heard nor saw anything. It was as if the cabin was empty.
That in itself was strange, for the doors of all the cabins along the way were open. In each, baggage awaited porters who were even now busy in front cabins labeling it and carting it to an upper deck. “Maybe the mystery has taken his baggage and walked out on us,” Bess thought as she continued down the corridor intent on making one more check of the stateroom to make certain that nothing was being forgotten. ”

“ Why, Nan, you don’t mean that at all. You know you don’t.”
“I do too mean it.” Nan’s chin was firm and her voice very positive as she spoke. “I want to be with all of you, just as we had planned, when we are in London.”
“Don’t be silly!” Bess paused in her packing to look at her friend. “You’ll have a better time than any of us can ever hope to have. If I didn’t like you so much, I’d just be green with envy. Think of it! You’ll see the whole royal family and talk to them. ”

“ Once Laura looked up at them. “I must say,” she said then to Nan, “that this isn’t a very cheerful looking bunch of ancestors that is watching us.”
Nan paused in her work to look, too. “They aren’t, are they?” she agreed, walking around the room and looking intently at each of their faces. “These are portraits, I think, of the first of the lairds of Emberon. A fighting lot they [183] were and as straight-laced as the best of the Scotsmen.”
“They look it,” Laura answered. “I, personally, feel as though they disapprove of every single dress I’m taking out of this bag.” ”

“ She grew restless. But Nan and Laura, always interested in strange new things, sat on the very edge of their seats, anxious not to miss any detail of what was happening.
“How I’d like to awaken Mrs. Cupp some drizzly dark morning with bagpipe music!” Laura’s eyes danced merrily at the thought.
“You’d be expelled as sure as anything,” Nan whispered back. “Will you look at that?” She almost fell off the edge of the seat in her excitement.
The Highlanders had retired for a while and, racing across the field now, were teams of two men each, one pushing a wheelbarrow and the other in it. ”

“ Mason and Walter were to be in London. She was to meet the friends she had made on the boat there, and the London celebration at the crowning of the new King and Queen would be, she knew, grander than anything she had ever seen.
She wanted to go on to London and she wanted to stay here in Emberon, too! These things all rushed through her mind as she stood in the great old Hall talking to James Blake.
“Yes, lass,” he repeated, “you’ve got to go. There’s something waiting there for you that’s far greater than anything that’s ever happened to you before. ”

“ The girls groaned.
“That’s right.” Amelia stuck to her point.
For a second Bess looked crestfallen, almost as though she had rather give up the party than have grim looking Mrs. Cupp present watching over it.
Laura, however, cheered her up. “Never mind, Bess,” she consoled, “she’s really not so bad, you know, after you have thawed her out with something warm to drink and given her something good to eat. Really, she can be quite human when she wants to be.”
“At any rate, we don’t have to think about Linda Riggs this time,” Bess said in an effort to find one patch of brightness in the situation. ”

“ Imagine, being with her every day, eating—you do eat on a boat, don’t you?—at her table, walking the deck with her, and perhaps even sharing your cabin with her!”
Nan laughed heartily at Grace’s last exclamation. “Why, Grace Mason,” she burst forth, after she had wiped her eyes with her handkerchief, “If you were dressed in clothes instead of those pajamas, I’d take you by the ear right now and march you straight over to Dr. Beulah’s apartment and introduce her to you. She doesn’t bite. She’s one of the nicest, if not the very nicest, person I have ever known. ”

“ Bess exclaimed, as she and her other Lakeview Hall friends sat together in Nan’s room in the great castle. “And I hate having to stay here! I don’t see why they can’t let us help too! After all, Nan’s our friend and if she is in trouble, we ought to be allowed to help her get out of it.”
“But Bess,” Rhoda spoke softly, “they told us to stay here so that we would be handy in case we were needed. I’m sure that if there was anything at all in the world that we could do, Dr. Prescott would call us.”
“I’m not so sure of that,” Bess answered. “She treats us most of the time as though we were babies. ”

“ They were coming from all corners of the world, Nan found, to be in England in May, to see the King and Queen parade in a golden coach from Buckingham Palace to Westminster Cathedral, to attend the balls and the garden parties and the Colonial fairs, to see the King review the British fleet at Spithead and hear the crowds cheer the pretty little princess at her party for the English school children. Everyone, young and old, Hetty’s grandmother said, was to have a part in the joyous week. ”

“ Bess exclaimed. “All the words about going sound like magic, don’t they? Sailing, walking on deck, landing, and passports and visas and going through customs. Do you know,” she admitted, “it almost scares me, when I think of all the strange new things that are going to happen. Why, we will be foreigners in a strange country!” she ended in amazement.
“Yes, and I hope they don’t treat us as we treat them sometimes,” Nan added.
“Well, they hadn’t better,” Bess retorted indignantly, as all the girls joined heartily in laughing at her. ”

“ Laura began.
“Oh, don’t tell me any more,” Nan shook her head. “I don’t know how I’m ever going to go out of here and face all those people. It scares me to think of it.”
“You needn’t worry, Nan,” Rhoda took her friend’s hand in hers. “We’ll all rally round. Everybody, really, is just being grand. I didn’t know there were so many nice people in the world.” ”

“ The trains were queer, like those you see sometimes in the movie with a corridor the whole length of each car. The passengers all sit in little compartments that have two seats facing one another. We all sat together, of course. Laura, Bess, and Dr. Beulah were on one side and Grace, Rhoda, Amelia, and myself on the other. When we ate, as we did soon after we were outside the city, the steward pulled a little table down between us so that we were really quite snug and cozy.
“It was nice, eating Scotch broth (and how good it was!) while a Scotch landscape unwound itself at your side. ”

“ Nan paused in her packing too, “was that glass promenade through which you could see the stars and the sky overhead. The moon was so big and full that no other lights were needed. I shall never forget it—nor that quartet of sailors that sang all those funny old sea ballads and then danced the hornpipe.”
The girls laughed together at the recollection, and then busied themselves in earnest. Nan kept the balloons for a couple of children back in Tillbury whose idol she was. Bess kept the favors, because she couldn’t bear to throw them away. ”

“ We just get rid of Linda and then he comes here to annoy us. Why can’t people leave us alone?” Bess was thoroughly incensed. “We only have a couple of more days on boat—”
“Oh, come let’s forget it all,” Nan interrupted. She was more than anxious to put the problem aside for the time being. “Let’s talk of something else. Or even better than that, let’s go upstairs and see the pictures the ship’s photographer has been taking.”
“What photographer? What pictures?” Amelia looked puzzled.
“You mean to say you haven’t seen the photographer at all!” Bess was incredulous. ”

“ Nan exclaimed enthusiastically as she placed chairs for the two visitors. “Your mother and dad are perfect peaches to have us all here tonight.”
Grace smiled shyly. “It was fun for me, too. Do you know, I’ve never before stayed up to watch the old year out and the New Year in! It’s my first New Year’s party.”
“And we’ll always remember it, too,” Rhoda chimed in. Then she looked rather sad, for it was the first time she had ever spent the holiday away from her pretty blind mother, her dad, and Rose Ranch.
“Yes,” it was curly headed Bess speaking now. “We will. Would you believe it? ”

“ Rhoda interrupted. “The earth does.”
“Well, anyway,” Laura continued her teasing, “there she was on the floor with her clocks. Each one was set at a different time and Amelia was drawing pictures. I heard her muttering to herself, ‘Now, if the sun rises in the east and sets in the west and the ship travels east, then we lose no, we gain time. No, we lose time.’ She couldn’t make up her mind, so she began all over again, ‘if the sun rises in the west, I mean the east, and we travel west, no east’—Say, which way are we traveling?” Laura had confused herself.
“East.” Nan laughed. ”

“ He came promptly, and before Nan and Bess left their stateroom again, all the baggage had been taken upstairs.
“There, I guess that fixes that,” Nan observed as they left the stateroom for the last time. “The steward will have charge of the baggage now until we land.”
“What I can’t understand,” Bess began as though there was only one question left in her mind, “is why Mr. Robert Hugh Blake is so determined to get into your baggage. What have you that’s so valuable?” ”

“ If they are healthy ghosts, they groan. If they are weaklings, they just whistle round a bit. Oh, there is no end to the excitement in these hoary places.
“Besides the ghosts and skeletons, there are always a few dissatisfied retainers who welcome the first opportunity to polish off the living owners. They hang around,” Laura was entirely oblivious to the fact that she had, for once in her life, startled Nan, “in caves, abandoned buildings, and sometimes behind sliding doors, and appear on the slightest pretext. ”