The truth was that the gypsy girl’s emotions had been varied and conflicting. Her first impulse had been to run and hide, as though she feared that she might be discovered and claimed, but, a second thought assured her that this could not be the caravan of Queen Mizella and her cruel son Anselo Spico, for had she not left them in far-away California?
And yet, as she gazed intently at the wagon in the lead, again came the chilling thought that it was strangely familiar, and then she recalled a memoried picture of one evening around the camp fire when Anselo had expressed a desire to some day return to Rumania, and, to do so, they would have to come to the Eastern States.
Then another emotion rushed to the heart of the watching girl. She remembered with tenderness the long years of loving devotion that Manna Lou had given her. She wondered if that kind gypsy woman had missed her when she ran away. Tears rushed to her eyes as she thought how selfish she had been. She should have tried long ago to let Manna Lou know that all was well with her.
Then it was that Nan decided to go close to the highway, and, from a hiding place watch the caravan as it passed, but she wanted to go alone. If it should be the band of Queen Mizella, then Nan would try in some way to communicate with Manna Lou.
With this determination in her heart, she had suggested to return to school. Phyllis who was really glad to have an opportunity to study her French verbs, went back willingly, but she glanced often at the dark face of the friend she so loved. She could not understand why Nan had suddenly lost her merry mood and had become so quiet and thoughtful.
Luckily for the gypsy girl’s plan, the French teacher, Madame Reznor, delayed Phyllis in the lower corridor, and Nan, leaving them, hurried to her room. Taking from the closet a long, dark cloak with a hood-cape, she slipped it on, and looking cautiously about the upper corridor to be sure that she was unobserved, she tripped lightly down the back stairs and out at the basement door.
She heard a gong ringing in the school, and she was glad, for it was calling all the pupils to the study hall, and there would be no one to spy upon her actions. But she was mistaken, for two of the girls who had been for a cross-country hike were returning, and one of them, Muriel Metcalf, chanced to glance in that direction just as Nan crouched behind the hedge that bordered the school grounds on the highway.
“Daisy Wells,” Muriel exclaimed, “how queerly Nan Barrington is acting. Let’s watch her and see what she is going to do.”
This they did, standing behind a spreading pine tree.