Just at that moment there were skipping footsteps outside in the corridor followed by an imperative knocking at the door.
Barbara opened it to admit a pretty, eager-eyed child, who held up a yellow envelope. “It’s for you, Miss Margaret,” she said. “Mrs. Martin said to bring it right up.”
The girl, as she opened the telegram, sincerely hoped that in it she would find a message bidding her to remain at the school, but she did not.
“Leave, if possible, on the 8.30 train tonight which reaches Chicago at six tomorrow morning. Wear a red ribbon bow that you may easily be recognized.”
It was signed: “Peter Wallace.”
Margaret’s eyes flashed and she tore the telegram to bits. “Peter Wallace, indeed! I’m not going to take orders from a wild west cow-boy. He may meet the six o’clock train tomorrow morning, but I won’t be on it.”
However, when Barbara had reluctantly departed for her class, Margaret found that the prospect of arriving in Chicago alone and unprotected was not a pleasant one to contemplate. With her father she had spent one day in the big city and she remembered how she had clung to his hand when they had crossed the streets and how terrorized she had been by the rush and roar of the traffic.
An hour later, when Babs returned, she was surprised to find that the trunk had been taken to the station. That evening Mrs. Martin and Barbara accompanied the young traveler to the train, as the principal of the school wished to be sure that her young charge was started safely on this, her first journey alone, and in the care of the kindly conductor.
It was not until the next morning, when the train was slowly entering Chicago, that Margaret, weary from an excited and sleepless night, placed a small red ribbon bow on the lapel of her warm, gold-brown coat, wondering, as she did so, what manner of person her escort would be.