“Because she foresaw just what would happen,” chuckled Nan.
“Oh! you can laugh!” cried Bess.
“We should not have been so gullible,” Nan declared. “That was a perfectly ridiculous story Laura told us about the food being so poor and scanty, and we should not have believed it.”
Bess was staring at her with angry sparks in her eyes. She suddenly burst out with:
“That old lunch box! If it hadn’t been for you, Nan Sherwood, we would not have brought it here with us.”
“Why——Is that quite right, Bess?” gently suggested Nan.
“Yes, it is!” snapped her chum. “If you had taken my advice you would have flung it out of the window and eaten in the dining car in a proper manner.”
There were a good many retorts Nan might have made. She wanted to laugh, too. It did seem so ridiculous for Bess to carry on so over a silly joke. She was making a mountain out of a molehill.
But it would be worse than useless to argue the point, and to laugh would surely make her chum more bitter—perhaps open a real breach between them that not even time could heal.
So Nan, in her own inimitable, loving way, put both arms suddenly about Bess and kissed her. “I’m awfully sorry, dear; forgive me,” she said, just as though the fault was all hers.