“What will you say when you catch somebody with jam on his fingers?” Harriet Newcomb inquired.
Marie leaned forward eagerly and answered dramatically:
“I’ll suddenly appear before the villain and shout: ‘Halt, you are my prisoner! Throw up your jammed hands!’”
After the laugh that greeted this response subsided, Miss Ladd closed her lecture thus:
“I think you all appreciate the importance now of keeping your thoughts to yourselves except when we are in conference. I’m glad to see you have a lot of fun over this subject, but don’t let your gay spirits cause you to permit any unguarded remarks to escape.”
On the train the girls all got out their knitting, and soon their needles were plying merrily away on sleeveless sweaters, socks, helmets, and wristlets for the boys at the front, timing their work by their wrist watches for patriotism honors. True to their resolve, following Miss Ladd’s warning lecture, they kept the subject of their mission out of their conversation, and it is probable that no reference to it would have been made during the entire 300-mile journey if something had not happened which forced it keenly to the attention of every one of them.
The train on which they were traveling was a limited and the first stop was fifty miles from Fairberry. A few moments after the train stopped, a telegraph messenger walked into the front entrance of the parlor car and called out:
“Telegram for Miss Harriet Ladd.”
The latter arose and received the message, signed the receipt blank, and tore open the envelope. Imagine her astonishment as she read the following:
“Miss Harriet Ladd, parlor car, Pocahontas Limited: Attorney Pierce Langford is on your train, first coach. Bought ticket for Twin Lakes. Small man, squint eyes, smooth face. Watch out for him. Letter follows telegram. Mrs. Hannah Hutchins.”