All the time these thoughts and queries were rioting in Nan Sherwood's mind she had to give her open attention to the buying of certain articles and to the questions and observations of the other girls. She and Bess purchased several things for their room; but Nan would have been better satisfied if they had been intimate enough with Rhoda to have asked her advice about the purchases.
They all trooped out with their bundles at last.
"My goodness!" laughed Bess, "we look like a gang of Italian immigrants being taken by a padrone into the woods. Only we should wear shawls over our heads instead of hats."
They went merrily along the streets to the point from which the car for Freeling started, and lo! there was Rhoda Hammond. She had evidently missed the previous car.
"Is that girl going to tag us wherever we go?" Bess asked, with some vexation.
"Sh!" warned Grace. "She has a perfect right to come over here to
Adminster, of course."
"My goodness! I should say she has," Lillie Nevins said, laughing.
"After telegraphing to her father for permission."
When the car came along Rhoda got in at the front and took the corner seat again, while the others crowded in through the rear door. The old man who acted as motorman was well known to some of the girls, and they hailed him, as well as the conductor, gayly. But the motorman seemed in no pleasant mood, for he scarcely answered their sallies.
He shut himself into the forward platform before the conductor gave the signal for starting, and dropped the latch on the double doors so that the girls should not disturb him. When the conductor took up the fares he said, on being questioned by Laura Polk:
"Oh, John is not feeling well, I guess. He hasn't acted like himself all day. But it's as much as my life's worth to ask him how he feels. He's got the temper of a wolf when he's under the weather—poor old John has."