As the car, piloted by Jane, whirled up to the station, a rather fat young man was seen dashing frantically around, talking first to the station agent and then to the baggage man, all the time violently mopping his face with a huge white handkerchief.
“There’s Charlie Preston in a stew as usual,” giggled Jane, pointing to the distraught young man, who was Mabel’s fiancé.
Suddenly Charlie stopped his gyrations and his face broke into a really charming smile.
“I was trying to find out from some of these misguided officials if you all had made arrangements to go on this train, for if you weren’t, I wasn’t either, but not one word could I get out of them but a polite ‘Speak to you after the train leaves,’ and, saving your presence, Miss Min, how the deuce would that help me?” Charlie exploded to his friends. He was a strange mixture of calmness in times of stress and great irritability and excitability in times of petty trials.
“All aboa’d!” cried the white-jacketed and very black porter.
“Oh! Daddy, good-bye, good-bye, I am going to miss you all the time, no matter how much fun I am having,” and Jane ruffled Mr. Pellew’s collar in the last of a series of bear hugs that had begun the night before.
“Don’t make such rash promises but write me occasionally, and Jack, you telegraph me as soon as you get to New York. I hope the rooms I wired for will be all right. And now I am going because I won’t feel so alone if I leave before the train pulls out,” he said and drove off with a great show of bravery.
At last they were settled comfortably for the long trip to New York, Aunt Min with a magazine and the young people planning good times for the few days they were to be in the city before going aboard the yacht.
“We can go to see Emmeline Cerrito. Jack, you know she is our beautiful French friend who is studying for grand opera. She hopes to make her appearance this fall. Maybe she will sing for us. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a lovelier voice; have you, Jane?” Ellen loved music.