“I can and I will,” said Florimel in the tone which her family had learned to recognize as final. “I’m going to see you don’t get kidnapped by these queer people. Take Anne, if you’re bound to go! But you won’t! So I’m going. I know you, Jane Garden. When you got there you’d double up, you’d be so scared. That’s you all over, getting up some perfectly crazy idea like this and then all but dying doing it, when there never was the least bit of sense in doing it, anyway! I’ll get a sandwich and my hat. Crazy Jane, that’s what you are!”
Florimel walked off rigid with determination, excitement, and disapproval, leaving Jane with a sense of their youngest’s competence, and relief that, after all, she was not going upon her adventure alone. Florimel returned with her sandwich and her hat disposed each in its proper place and manner. The sandwich had become plural; luckily the hat had not. “I put a scrawl on Mary’s napkin telling her we had gone downtown on a secret errand, but would be back by ten,” said Florimel. “Good thing I didn’t run into Anne; she’d have been hard to quiet down. You’ve got on your street suit, and I haven’t, but I guess this is good enough.”
“You look very nice in that green and white chambray, Mel,” said Jane meekly. And the sisters sallied forth by the side gate of the garden into the quiet, shaded street.
It was a long walk to the heart of the small town where stood the Waldorf, Vineclad’s shabby and unique hotel, near the Crystal Theatre, which escaped by not much more than its name being merely a small town hall. Hollyhock House stood well beyond the collected business of Vineclad, out beyond the smaller homes of the place, built where acres for its setting and for its garden had been obtainable.
Jane and Florimel timed their progress to get to the hotel before eight, but they fell below their estimate of time required and got to the hotel somewhat before half-past seven.
“Good morning, young ladies,” said the clerk, as the girls halted before his desk. “You are familiar to me, yet I cannot place you. What can I do for you? Are you denizens of our lovely town?”
“Yes,” said Jane, without further enlightening him. “I want to see Miss Aldine, Miss Alyssa Aldine. She doesn’t know me, but please ask if I may see her—on business, important business.”
The clerk leaned over his desk as if to take the young girls into his confidence and Jane and Florimel fell back a few steps.
“Why, bless your lovely face and heart,” he said, “what time do you think the perfesh, which stop here, rises?—especially the lady perfeshes? Just in time to take the train! Just—barely—in—time—to—take—the—train, hustling!” He, too, fell back at this and regarded the girls triumphantly. “Breakfast in bed—also in curl papers—and a hustle to make the train. That’s the racket. Grand show last night; was you to it? Pity! Grand show. Now, I’ll tell you what to do. You go sit down comfortable in two of the Waldorf’s rockers, in the parlour, and wait calm and easy. And I’ll get a message up to Miss Aldine just’s soon as I think she will stand for it, and see if she won’t meet you. Peachy lady, she is, but I’ll tell her there’s two little girls here worth her looking at. Is that a go? Best I can do.”
“Thank you,” said Jane faintly, already dismayed by the unaccustomed atmosphere which she was breathing. “Yes, thank you; we’ll wait.”