“I promise!” Carol replied and she smilingly waved through an open window as long as she could see her friends.
The two hours to Buffalo passed quickly and then there was another hour on a noisy little local train, but Carol was so interested in all she saw that the time passed quickly, and it hardly seemed possible that they could have reached the end of their journey when she heard the brakeman call, “Linden!”
Her heart beat rapidly. In another moment she would see the beautiful Evelyn. How she did hope that they were to be good friends.
They two were the only passengers to alight at the station of Linden, and at once Carol saw a tall, slender girl in black, who came hurrying forward. With a little cry of joy, she threw her arms about Mr. Dartmoor’s neck, and for a moment neither spoke.
“Oh, Granddad!” Evelyn said at last. “How lonely, lonely I have been since I saw you!”
“Well, we’re here now,” Mr. Dartmoor exclaimed brightly, “and this is my little friend Carol Lorens.”
Evelyn held out her hand to the other girl as she said, “I am so glad that you have come. Having a friend of Granddad’s here will be almost like having Granddad himself.”
“I am glad, too,” Carol replied simply. On the train Mr. Dartmoor had asked her not to tell Evelyn at present how she happened to come to Linden.
The school bus was waiting, and Mr. Dartmoor gallantly helped the girls in and sat opposite them. Then to entertain them on the drive, he told them that Carol’s grandfather and he had been “pals” when they were boys.
“Then it is but natural that you and I should be friends,” Evelyn declared.