“They are just gorgeous,” Rhoda stooped over to smell them, “so red, and fragrant, and fresh.”
“Aren’t they though?” Nan reached out and touched them softly. “But tell me now,” she looked up. “What’s new?”
“You should know,” Laura answered. “You are the news around here. Everyone’s talking about you. There are at least a dozen different versions of what happened last night making the rounds of this ship. One has it that Linda actually went over the side of the boat and that you leaped in and saved her from drowning. Then you caught hold of a rope, and a sailor, out to see that everything was shipshape, heard your cries, and hauled the two of you in.”
“Another,” Amelia said further, as Nan laughed, “has you in a fight with Linda. Oh, I mean,” she corrected herself when Nan looked worried, “that Linda is supposed to have become so frightened that she didn’t know what she was doing. She tore at your hair and scratched you. (Here Nan ran her hand over her face. It was perfectly whole.) Finally, when you realized that she was beyond reason, you are supposed to have hit her over the head so hard that you knocked her out!”
“And another—” Laura began.
“Oh, don’t tell me any more,” Nan shook her head. “I don’t know how I’m ever going to go out of here and face all those people. It scares me to think of it.”
“You needn’t worry, Nan,” Rhoda took her friend’s hand in hers. “We’ll all rally round. Everybody, really, is just being grand. I didn’t know there were so many nice people in the world.”
“Isn’t it so?” Nan forgot her embarrassment. “Look at that pile of cards and notes and books and magazines. Why, I believe all the passengers on the ship have stopped in to ask about me and one little boy”—she stopped and giggled before she went on—“wanted my autograph! Can you imagine anything so silly? But tell me, what did happen? I fainted, didn’t I? I don’t remember a thing after I found those doors were locked.”
“Oh, Nan,” Bess couldn’t restrain herself any longer. “Maybe you were there for hours, we don’t know. We only know this: after we left you out there on deck we all went into the lounge and talked and played games for a long time.”
“We wondered where you were, didn’t we?” She looked at the others for confirmation. They nodded their heads as Bess went on, “but we thought that you were probably off somewheres with that English girl, what is her name?”