Nan laughed heartily at Grace’s last exclamation. “Why, Grace Mason,” she burst forth, after she had wiped her eyes with her handkerchief, “If you were dressed in clothes instead of those pajamas, I’d take you by the ear right now and march you straight over to Dr. Beulah’s apartment and introduce her to you. She doesn’t bite. She’s one of the nicest, if not the very nicest, person I have ever known. I can’t imagine a pleasanter person in all this wide world to take us on this trip.
“She was telling me,” she added as an afterthought and in answer to Grace’s question, “that we are to go over on a steamship line that will land us in Glasgow, for we are to stop first at Emberon. It seems some distant relatives of mine want to be the first to welcome us when we land.”
“What fun!” Bess exclaimed. “All the words about going sound like magic, don’t they? Sailing, walking on deck, landing, and passports and visas and going through customs. Do you know,” she admitted, “it almost scares me, when I think of all the strange new things that are going to happen. Why, we will be foreigners in a strange country!” she ended in amazement.
“Yes, and I hope they don’t treat us as we treat them sometimes,” Nan added.
“Well, they hadn’t better,” Bess retorted indignantly, as all the girls joined heartily in laughing at her. Bess laughed too, when she realized what she had said, “What I mean is—”
“Never mind, Bessie,” Nan comforted. “We know you are not as rude as you sound, and that you don’t mean half of what you say,” she ended teasingly.
“Oh, I don’t care what you say,” Bess returned nobly, “I feel so happy that I am going to be on that boat with all of you that there is nothing that you could say that would bother me.”
“Not even,” Laura goaded her, “the statement that we are going over cabin class while Linda Riggs is going first class on the same boat.”
“It’s not true,” Bess denied without thinking.
“Of course it isn’t, Bess,” Rhoda looked reprovingly across at Laura. “No one has heard a thing about Linda for months now. She might just as well be living in another world so far as we are concerned.”