“Queer, how she acts,” admitted Mrs. Manton. “I just wonder—— But of course she is only hurrying to get us off. She knows we will miss the first show if we do not get away at once.”
Jerry was soon out, stick in hand, and a broad grin on his handsome face.
“Nary a thing,” he announced. “Nora, I am afraid your scouting has gone to your head. That, or you are seeing things.”
Before Nora might have replied Ted insisted they hurry off or give up the trip to Lenox, entirely.
“I’m ready,” Nora said, instead of commenting on the moving shadow. “I shouldn’t like to miss that picture.”
“All aboard!” sang out Jerry, and when the little car shot out of the woods into the splendid turnpike—the pride of all motorists for many miles around—Vita might have entertained her mysterious visitor (if she really had one) to her heart’s content, for all of the party bound cityward.
Since her arrival at Woodlands Nora had little chance for auto rides, there were so many more interesting things to do, so that the short trip to Lenox now seemed something of a luxury.
But the evening’s entertainment was even more delightful. The attractive little theatre was so prettily made up with colored paper flowers over the lights, with breezy electric fans and such simple contrivances as, in the larger city, Nora had not seen, it all appeared new, novel and attractive. It was quaint and cosy, and such an effect was ever delightful to the fanciful daughter of a woman who called herself Nannie instead of mother.
All about them people greeted the Mantons, and it was plain they were held in high esteem by many, farmers as well as more cultured folks, plain or dressed up—all had a pleasant word or a cordial greeting for the government surveyor and his attractive wife.
Nora wondered if the Girl Scouts ever came in to see the pictures, but Ted expressed the opinion that when they did come they came in a crowd and made a regular party of the occasion.