“Yes, or we won’t get anything to eat.” Amelia was slightly impatient. “Come, let’s hurry. There doesn’t seem to be anybody else around at all. Do you know where the dining room is?” she turned to Nan with the question.
“I do,” Laura answered. “It’s up on Deck B. I looked in when I first came down to our cabin. Just follow me.”
There was music as the girls hurried up the stairway and in through wide double doors. “Looks like a hotel dining room,” Grace whispered as the chief steward came toward them.
“Your stubs, please?” he asked and then escorted them to a big round table in the center of the room, a table all their own, perfectly set for seven people.
There was a low bowl of flowers in the center and a card which read,
“To Nan Sherwood,
S. S. Lincoln,
c/o Chief Steward.
“May each day of your journey be more exciting and more pleasant than the one past.”
“Who is it from, Nan?” Even Dr. Prescott was eager to know. She had been sitting at the table waiting for the girls to appear.
Nan turned the card over. “Why, how nice!” she exclaimed, “and how thoughtful!” Then she looked up at Dr. Prescott and the girls waiting at their places. “It is from a famous movie actress,” she said rather shyly, and her face was all aglow, “whom I met once in Chicago. She’s a perfectly grand person.” Nan was silent as the details of that meeting rushed through her mind, as she remembered how an unfortunate encounter with Linda had brought it about. As she sat down, she wondered idly whether the summer holidays that were before her would be as exciting as those winter holidays, spent in Chicago at Grace’s home, had been.
“What’s happened to Elizabeth?” Dr. Prescott asked as she picked up her menu. “Not sea-sick already, I hope?”