“‘Now, don’t fail to keep in touch with me, Grace. I want to know at every step how your plans are progressing.
“‘My love,
“‘Mother.’”
“Isn’t—that——just———grand!” Bess was the first to speak after the letter was finished. “Oh, Grace, your mother and dad are so good to us. Think of it, Nan, we will be able to take some drives over the lovely English countryside in the spring of the year.”
“I am,” Nan answered quietly, though inside she was really more excited than Bess. She liked Walter’s car and had already had some pleasant drives in it. Now, she could see herself in imagination skimming over the English roads. “By the way,” she turned to Grace, “when is it Walter will be crossing?”
“Oh, not until several weeks after we do,” Grace answered. “Dad’s going to be busy until well into April. But we’ll all be together for the coronation, I am sure. Did I tell you this? Mother says someplace at the beginning of her letter that a business acquaintance of Dad’s has written that we may watch the procession go by from his offices. It seems he is right down in Piccadilly and has an ideal location. The King and Queen and all of them will pass right by there on their way to Westminster from Buckingham Palace to be crowned. Then, they will pass by, too, on their way back. Why, dad says that if we bought such seats, we would have to pay at least a hundred dollars apiece!”
“Oh, Grace, what would we do without you!” Nan exclaimed. “That’s the biggest piece of news yet! Dr. Prescott has been having trouble getting good seats for us, I know, for we put in our bid so late. I wrote to the solicitors in Edinburgh who handled mother’s inheritance just the other day to find out whether anything could be done. It will be almost a month before I can possibly hear, and I was so afraid that it would be too late! Now, you have settled the problem entirely.”
Grace blushed. She adored Nan. Praise from her sent her spirits skyward. Now she returned to her original question. “Will you stop in Chicago at the beginning or the end of the vacation,” she persisted.
“Oh, at the end,” Nan capitulated. “I couldn’t possibly stop at the beginning, I am that anxious to get home and see Momsey! There are at least a million questions I want to ask her about all of this. I wish the Easter vacation was twice as long as it is and that it was going to begin tomorrow. Then I wish that we were leaving the day after vacation ends. Oh, girls, I sometimes feel I’m going to burst!
“If you only knew how much I’ve wanted to see all those places Momsey and Papa wrote about when they were over in Scotland a year or so ago! They tell me that the old castle that belonged to the ancient Lairds of Emberon is a queer spooky old place. Most of it is not in use anymore, but there are a few rooms that have never been closed. These are the ones that are to be ours for the time we stay there. Sounds thrilling, doesn’t it?”
“Thrilling!” Bess took up the word. “Why, there’s nothing like this trip ever happened to us before!”
“What are you people cooking up now?” It was Laura’s voice that broke in on them. “I declare, sometimes I think I’d better move my trunk and belongings right into this room. Then I’d be on the spot when things happened.”