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!”
CHAPTER II
ALL ABOUT NAN
Nan Sherwood stumbled and would have fallen, for she could not pick her steps very safely with her gaze directed behind, had not a firm hand seized her shoulder. The gentleman who did this may have been as intent upon detaining the girl as upon saving her from an overthrow.
“Hoity-toity!” he ejaculated, in a rather querulous voice. “Hoity-toity!” he repeated. “What’s this I hear? ‘Stop thief’? Impossible!”
He was a lean-faced man with a deeply lined countenance, a big nose, and shell-bowed spectacles through which his pale, gray eyes twinkled, after all, in a rather friendly way. Or so the startled Nan thought in those few seconds that elapsed before the other girl reached them.
“Impossible!” repeated the man, having looked into Nan’s eyes.