“Well, you didn’t expect all the girls would turn out with a brass band to greet us, did you?” chuckled Nan.
“But surely there must be some means of conveyance to the Hall!”
“Shank’s mare, maybe,” returned her cheerful chum.
“You can laugh!” cried Bess, as though she considered Nan’s serenity a fault. “But I don’t want to climb away up that hill to-night in the dark, and with this heavy old suit-case.”
“Quite right. That would be too big a premium placed upon education,” laughed Nan. “Let us ask.”
A man with a visored cap who was hurrying past at this juncture, was halted and questioned.
“B’us for the Hall? Yes, Miss. Just the other side of the station if it hasn’t already gone,” he said.
“There! we’ve lost it,” complained Bess, starting on a run.
“Impossible! How could we lose it when we never have had it?”
“Oh, you can be funny——”