Nan was up in her bedroom in the evening looking dreamily out of the window and imagining she was already at the famous winter resort when she gave a start.
Two men were slinking around, behind some trees on the opposite side of the street! From time to time they gazed at the house as if looking for somebody.
"The same men! What can it mean?"
Nan breathed the words to herself. She had seen these men before since coming home from school. They had leered at her when on an errand to the drugstore, and one of them had acted as if he wanted to speak to her while she was at the depot asking for a timetable. But a man friend had come up to greet her and the stranger had slunk away.
Nan's first impulse was to call her father and mother. But then she hesitated. Why worry her parents, and especially her mother, when, after all, it might mean little or nothing?
She looked again. Some men had come up the street. At sight of them the two slinking ones shrank back and presently hurried away.
"I hope I never see them again," said the girl to herself. But this wish was not to be gratified.
Yet the next day Nan gave the strange men hardly a thought. There were so many things to be done in preparation for the great trip.
"It's not like going out to Rose Ranch, where any old thing was good enough to wear," Nan confided to Bess. "We've got to look our best, on Grace's account as well as our own."
"And Walter's," added Bess, and then Nan promptly threw a book at her chum.