“Far from it,” Nan laughed. “Bess is too busy being an ocean traveller to even have time to think of such a thing. Really, Dr. Prescott,” Nan leaned across the table and said earnestly, “you can’t imagine what a kick we are getting out of all of this. It’s like something girls do in story books.”
“And the journey has just begun.” Dr. Prescott smiled at her young charges. “It all brings my first trip—I was a little older than you are now—back to me most vividly. Now, what will we have to eat?”
“Oh-h-h, will you look at this menu,” Laura spoke up now. “Not much like one of Mrs. Cupp’s—” she stopped suddenly and blushed. It was hard to remember that Dr. Prescott, the head of Lakeview Hall, was present. Laura looked up over the top of her menu, ready to apologize. But Dr. Prescott seemed not to have heard. She seemed wholly occupied in choosing the mid-day meal. “What a brick she is!” Laura thought to herself as she, too, turned to the business at hand.
“Just one warning,” Dr. Prescott cautioned before the girls turned to the table steward to give him their orders. “You eat about six times a day on the boat—” She paused as the girls gasped. “You have a big breakfast, bouillon and wafers in the middle of the morning, lunch, tea and cakes in the afternoon, dinner, and then before you go to bed, there are sandwiches and perhaps something warm to drink. If you are going to eat each time,” she went on, “you’ll have to be careful. Otherwise you’ll be spending the hours in your stateroom. There,” she finished, “that is my only lecture for the day. Now, do as you will.”
So they chose—carefully, except Laura, who could not resist having both French pastry and ice-cream for desert. “Bess will never forgive me,” she spoke up after she had ordered, “if she doesn’t get here in time for this first meal on the boat.”
“She ought to be here any time now,” Amelia looked at her watch. “It doesn’t take long to get your table card. You don’t suppose they lock the dining room doors when everyone is in and that they won’t let her through now?” she directed the question to Dr. Prescott.
“Why, I hardly think so.” Dr. Prescott smiled. “People are coming and going all the time, you see.”
“Bess will get here. Never fear.” Nan spoke up confidently. “Let’s eat. She told us not to wait.” As the lunch progressed, however, from soup through a dainty salad and slices of cold chicken to dessert, Nan grew uneasy.
“It is strange that she doesn’t appear,” she finally admitted, and was about to leave the dining room and go in search of her when Bess was ushered to the table.
“I’m sorry to be so late,” Bess murmured as she sat down and unfolded her napkin, “but I couldn’t help it.” Her face was flushed. She looked confused and angry.