“There, don’t get so excited, my child!” said her aunt. “You need not worry now—if your conscience is clear. Nor is there, I take it, any hurry. Now let me tell you about the dinner party which I am arranging in your honor for tonight.”
Daisy and Florence looked up expectantly, longing to ask whether their friends of the road were included. They wondered, too, whether they had called that morning as they had promised.
Miss Vaughn answered their question before they asked it.
“Mr. Cryton and Mr. McDaniel called this morning, but I sent word that you girls were resting, and invited them to the party tonight. My two nephews will be here, and two young men with whom they have been playing tennis all morning.”
“Are they members of this same fraternity?” asked Marjorie, irrelevantly.
“No,” laughed the old lady; “they are eastern boys. But they motored across the continent, so they ought to prove interesting to you.”
“I am sure they will,” murmured Alice, as the party rose to answer the luncheon summons.
The Crowell boys were a little late to the meal, but they entered the room with the same assurance which they had displayed on the previous evening, and Marjorie found her first feelings of dislike confirmed. As the luncheon progressed, she grew increasingly ill at ease; the beautiful, spacious dining-room, the noiseless servants, the delicious food went by unnoticed. Something was wrong, she knew; she could sense it before she could define it.
She glanced over at Ethel, and recognized the same evidence of distress in her expression. Something in her eyes, too, said, “Trouble Ahead,” and Marjorie looked away.
Both girls knew that as yet the cars were still only potential!