"Well, well, did you hold up the train?" they cried.
"Thought you'd come along, too, did you?" asked Doctor Forester. "Good! Glad to have you. I thought it was odd you weren't round to see us off. Go and surprise the girls. They're just back there, waiting for their berths."
Jeff hurried eagerly away. A moment later Evelyn, standing in the aisle beside Charlotte, felt a touch on her arm. She looked up, and met Jeff's eyes smiling down at her.
"Did you think I'd let you go like that?" he said in her ear.
"I'm afraid I thought you had," she admitted, grown happy in an instant.
"You see, I had an appointment with a man in West Weston on some work I've been doing for him. After I heard this plan of Doctor Forester's I had only just time to catch a train and get out there. He kept me so long I missed the train that would have brought me back in time to see you off, so I telephoned Chester Agnew to get the flowers for me and write a card. That was when I was afraid I might not make connections at all. But when this man I went to see--he's a railroad man--heard what train I'd wanted to make, he offered to stop it for me. Then it just came into my mind that I'd join the party, even without an invitation. Tell me you're not sorry--won't you?"
"Of course I'm not." She allowed him one of her frank looks, and he smiled back at her.
"We'll have a great day to-morrow," he prophesied. "They'll put on a Pullman with an observation rear in the morning, and if the weather holds we'll camp out there for the day. We don't get into Washington till three in the afternoon, and the scenery all the way down will be fine. I suppose I'll have to go off now and let you be tucked up. Please get up bright and early in the morning, will you?"
It was a merry party which entered the dining-car the next morning the moment the first summons came. The day had risen bright and clear as a June day could be, and everybody was in a hurry to get out on the observation platform.
Doctor Forester, sitting opposite Charlotte and Andy at one table, glanced across at the rest of the party, on the opposite side of the car, and said in a low voice: