The story of a young girl heading off to boarding school and the adventures that she has there.
By : Annie Roe Carr
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There would have been no trouble at all, Nan was sure, had it not been for that new bag.
In the first place it was a present from her Aunt Kate Sherwood, although Nan purchased it herself. The purchasing of most of her school outfit was supervised by Mrs. Harley, at the same time that her own daughter’s was bought, but a few last purchases were left to the girls and Nan and Bess certainly had a most delightful time shopping in Chicago for a week, before they started for Lakeview Hall.
Of course, Bess’ mother was right at hand to advise and guide; otherwise careless Bess would have bought with prodigal hand, and cautious Nan’s outfit would not have been as well selected as the girl’s absent mother would have desired.
But nobody interfered with the matter of the brand new bag. Nan and her chum went to one of the smartest leather-goods shops and selected the shiny, russet-leather beauty without any adult interference save that of an obliging clerk. Mrs. Henry Sherwood had saved the money herself and insisted upon Nan’s taking it and purchasing “just the handsomest traveling bag the money would buy.”
“You know, honey-bird,” the good woman said to her niece, the evening before Nan left Pine Camp—which was away up in the Peninsula of Michigan. “You know, honey-bird, money’s been scarce with your Uncle Hen and me for some time back; but now that the trouble about the Perkins Tract is settled, and he can go to lumbering again, we’ll be all right.
“I honestly do believe, Nan, that if you hadn’t made such a friend of Toby Vanderwiller and of his wife and his crippled grandson, and if you and your Cousin Tom hadn’t helped Tobe out of the swamp when he got mired in the big storm, that maybe the trouble about the boundary line between your uncle’s timber option and Gedney Raffer’s tract, wouldn’t have been settled, in court or out, for a year or two.
“That being the case,” Mrs. Sherwood pursued, “your Uncle Henry and I, and Tom and Rafe, would have been mighty poor for a long time to come. Now the prospect’s bright before us, child, and I want you should take this I’ve saved from my egg and berry money, and buy you just the handsomest traveling bag you can get for it.
“I’ve seen ’em all pictured out in the mail-order catalogue—full of brushes, and combs, and cut-glass bottles to hold sweet scent, and tooth-powder, and all sorts of didos. That’s the kind I want you to have.”
“Oh! but Aunt Kate!” Nan Sherwood said doubtfully, “this is a great deal of money to spend for a hand bag.”
“I wish ’twas twice as much!” declared the lumberman’s wife, vigorously.
“Twice as much?” Nan gasped.
“Yes. Then the things could be gold trimmed instead of only silver. I want you to have the very nicest bag of any girl going to that big school.”
The awe-struck Nan and the delighted Elizabeth were quite sure that the woman from the Michigan Peninsula had her wish when they walked out of the leather-goods shop, the handsome russet bag firmly clutched by its possessor.
The bag was packed at once, for its purchase was almost the last bit of shopping there was to do before the chums from Tillbury left Chicago. Mrs. Harley rose early in the morning to go with them to the train. She declared that afterward she intended going back to the hotel to “sleep for a week.”
“I’d rather superintend the general fall cleaning at home than get you two girls ready to go to boarding school again,” she sighed.
“I’m sure you’ve been awfully good to me, Mrs. Harley,” said Nan. “My own dear Momsey Sherwood could have treated me no more kindly. And, of course, she couldn’t have shopped for me so well, for she has been too much of an invalid for a long while to take any interest in the shops.”
Mrs. Harley kissed her heartily. “You blessed child!” she declared. “You’re no trouble to suit. Bess is the finicky person.” Her daughter began to pout. “Oh, you are, Miss!” and her mother held up an admonitory finger and shook it at Bess. “Next time I shall buy what I think is proper and leave you at home while I am buying. Why! these children nowadays are more fussy about their frocks, and more insistent upon the style of them, than their mothers. What I shall do, Elizabeth, when your little sisters are old enough to go away to school, I—do—not—see!”
“Oh, by that time,” said Bess, the modern, “I shall be ‘out,’ I hope, and may have really something to say about my own clothes.”
“Hear her!” ejaculated Mrs. Harley. “It will be several years yet, young lady, before you will be ‘out,’ as you call it, or be allowed to spend your father’s money as lavishly as you would like to.”
Nevertheless she kissed her daughter tenderly, just before the train started, and Bess forgot for a moment that she was anything but a young girl going a long way off from a very dear and indulgent mother. They clung to each other for that tender, heart-breaking moment, and Nan Sherwood’s eyes overflowed in sympathy.
Nan had been through the same ordeal six months before, when her own dear mother and father had started for Scotland, while she left Tillbury on the very same day for her uncle Henry’s backwoods home in the heart of the Upper Michigan forest.
“Don’t cry, Bess,” she begged her chum when the train was out of the station and the “clip, clip, clip-py-ti-clip” of the wheels over the rail joints had tailed off into a staccato chatter, scarcely discernible through the steady drumming of the great trucks under the chair-car. “Don’t cry. You know, honey, your mother isn’t going to be near as far from you as my dear Momsey is from me.”
“I don’t care,” sniffed Bess. “If I can’t see her. But oh, Nan Sherwood!” she added sharply. “What kind of grammar was that you just used—‘near as far’? If Mr. Mangel, our high-school principal at Tillbury, thought you would use such language he would never have written to Dr. Beulah Prescott that he considered you entitled to a rating equal with the remainder of our class.”
“Don’t sniff and turn up your nose, Miss, at my diction,” laughed Nan. “Your nose is bound to be red if you keep on—and your eyes, too.”
“Is it? Are they?” gasped Bess.
“Is it—are they what?” demanded Nan, rather startled.
“Why, my nose and eyes red!”
“Well! talk about grammar!” ejaculated Nan. “I wouldn’t criticise, if I were you.”
“Never mind the English language,” begged Bess. “Let me look in your mirror.”
Of course, that necessitated the opening of the brand new bag. Then, when Bess thought she had discovered a suspicious redness of the tip of her nose, she must needs use the powder puff which was one of the wonderful “didos” among the toilet requisites in the bag.
While Bess was so busily engaged in restoring the havoc made upon her fresh young countenance by her recent emotion, there sounded suddenly a heavy banging and thumping underneath the chair-car in which the girls were riding, though not at their end of the coach.
Nervous people at the rear of the car jumped up and one or two screamed. Almost instantly the train began to slow down, with much hissing of steam and compressed air, and soon came to a complete stop.
Nan had jumped up, too, but not because she was frightened. None of the trainmen came in of whom to ask about the stop and Nan went to the front door and out into the vestibule. Even the colored porter was not in sight.
“What is it, Nan?” Bess asked, still powdering her nose, for she had been obliged to postpone this delicate operation until the train had come to its bumping stop.
“I don’t know,” answered her chum. “I’m going forward to ask.”
But hardly had she said this, when the rear door of the car opened and a uniformed attendant said, speaking clearly:
“All passengers are requested to move into the rear coach, with all hand baggage. This car is to be taken out of the train at once because of an accident. All passengers will please move to the rear coach with hand baggage. Another chair car will be put in to accommodate you at the junction. All back to rear coach!”
He came through shouting these directions so that all in the car could hear him. Bess jumped up, very much excited now, with:
“Oh, my gracious! Do you hear that, Nan? Do get down my coat and suit-case. You’re taller than I am.”
Her chum good-naturedly did as she was requested and Bess started down the aisle. Indeed, the two friends were about the first to leave the chair-car by the rear door.
Just as they got into the vestibule, however, Nan noticed that her chum’s hands were empty.
“Why, Bess Harley!” she cried. “Where’s my bag?”
“Your bag?” returned Bess, with wide-open eyes. “Why! haven’t you brought it?”
“Well!” But there! What was the use? Nan knew well just how heedless Bess was. There was positively no good in getting angry with her. “Here!” she exclaimed, thrusting the suit-case, the lunch box, and her chum’s own wrap into Bess’ hands. “Get a seat if you can and hold on to these while I go back for that bag.”
“I must have left it right in the chair you sat in,” said Bess, feebly.
Nan did not hear this. She had some trouble in getting back into the car, for she was stemming the tide of outflowing passengers.
She reached the spot at last. The more moderately moving passengers were all about her. On the floor between two of the chairs was the russet bag.
Nan seized it quickly and turned to hasten back to her chum. The aisle was clear for the moment and she ran.
Almost instantly a shrill voice cried out behind her:
“Here! how dare you? That’s my bag. Stop thief!”
Nan Sherwood cast a horrified glance over her shoulder. Yes! the voice addressed her. An angry girl, very fussily and expensively dressed, had started wildly down the car after Nan, and again she shrieked:
“Stop thief!”
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