“I’m going back in the next car for a little while.”
“What for?”
“Did you lose anything?” asked Belle, who overheard what Cora said.
“No, but you saw me talking to that girl on the platform; didn’t you?”
“Yes, and I wondered who she was,” remarked Bess.
“Freda Lewis! Why, I never would have known her!”
“Nor I!” added Belle. “How she has changed! Of course you were more intimate with her than we were, Cora; but she certainly doesn’t seem to be the same girl.”
“She isn’t,” replied Cora. “She and her mother are in trouble—financial trouble. I’m going back and talk to her. I want to help her if I can.”
And while Cora is thus bent on her errand of good cheer, it may not be out of place, for the benefit of my new readers, to tell a little something more about the characters of this story, and how they figured in the preceding books of this series.