The Motor Maids by Rose, Shamrock and Thistle Part 25

"The rain is over. We had better be going," he said.

"Will you thank your master for us, please, and tell him we enjoyed his hospitality and the shelter of his home in the storm?" Edward remarked politely to the housekeeper.

"Since you are such friends of the masters, young sirs," said Miss Rivers, "you must be on the right side." She paused and looked at them inquiringly.

"We trust so," replied Edward.

"Maybe, then, you'd take interest in the bit of news I've brought with me down from London," continued the woman, a crafty look in her small fishy eyes that Nancy seemed to remember as if she had seen it only yesterday.

"We would, of course," said Edward.

"Then, come close to me and I'll tell ye," whispered the loquacious being, who, it was plain, was bursting with her news. "Tweedledum is in a great rage and no mistakes, and he's going to Ireland."

Only Nancy did not smile at this piece of interesting information.

"Indeed," said Edward Bacon, "how very interesting. We must be going.

Don't disturb yourself, Madam, we'll just leave the way we came in, by the open front door. Good day."

They hastened from the villa just as the last rays of the setting sun gleamed through a bank of clouds.

"Mad as a March hare," Nancy heard one of the students say.

"She has fatty degeneration of the brain, I suppose," said another.

Then they all laughed.

"It was a jolly good joke on us, just the same, to excite our curiosity and tell us that Tweedledum had gone to Ireland! By Jove, but that's a thrilling bit of news," exclaimed Edward Bacon.

They turned over the boat to drain it out, and once more embarked on the little river.

Nancy had gradually become very weary of her eight cavaliers. She yearned infinitely to be back with Miss Campbell and her friends. With sad and tearful eyes she gazed on the ruins of her pink hat.

"I've been wicked,-I've been wicked! Will they ever forgive me?" she thought, while two hot tears rolled down her cheeks and fell on the rumpled folds of her damp dress.

"Don't cry," whispered the student sitting beside her in the stern of the boat. "There are lots of hat stores in Oxford. Can't it be furbished up a bit?" He pointed to the crushed ma.s.s of pink.

"It isn't the hat,-at least not entirely," sobbed Nancy. "It's because I went off like this without leaving word and with so many strange b-boys."

"But we aren't altogether strange, you see, because several of us know Peppercorn and the Paxtons," the young man a.s.sured her.

As the boat skimmed over the waters back toward Oxford and Nancy saw the towers of St. Magdalen's glistening in the sunshine, she began to feel more and more uncomfortable and wretched. Perhaps Miss Campbell would send her back to America with a note to her mother and father that she could not be responsible for a girl like Nancy. She would lose her three friends, Billie and Elinor and Mary. She would not visit the castle in Ireland, nor see Maria again, and then-there was her best hat,-ruined-utterly ruined. She choked down her sobs. She must command herself before all these strangers. Dipping her handkerchief into the water, she dabbled her eyes pathetically.

"I'm afraid you'll think American girls are dreadful cry babies," she said, "but, you see, I know I've done wrong and I can't think of any explanation or excuse."

The eight young men were deeply sympathetic. Nancy weeping was quite as fascinating to them as Nancy smiling and demure.

"Never regret the past. Think only of the future," observed a cadaverous-looking student regarding Nancy through the double lenses of a pair of large spectacles like a quizzical owl.

Nancy gazed at him doubtfully.

"I'm trying to think of the future," she answered. "That's why I'm unhappy."

"Could any one have the heart to scold you?" asked the spectacled student.

She did not reply, but her heart remained decidedly unquiet and troubled, and she desired earnestly to make the confession and take the medicine, whatever it was to be. At least she would have something interesting to tell them: Felicia Rivers and that queer thing about Tweedledum.

However, like half the world, Nancy was very apt to magnify her troubles. Nothing could exceed her misery when she hastened up High Street half an hour later with her escort of eight. At the hotel she found that her friends had not returned. Why should she have imagined that she was the only person who had been caught in the rain that afternoon? After eight friendly handshakes and a sad little smile for eight at once, she hurried to her room. Now that they had not missed her, it would be much easier to confess her sins. At last they burst into the apartment as bedraggled and damp as she herself had been, but bearing a bit of information which the newsboys had been calling out for some time in the street below, although Nancy had been too occupied to notice what they were saying.

"Nancy, what do you think has happened?" cried Billie, rushing to her friend, without so much as inquiring about the two exciting hours which had intervened between this and their last meeting. "Little Arthur, the Duke of Kilkenty's youngest son-do you remember, Nancy-our little Arthur,-has been kidnapped? Now, what do you think of that for a thrilling piece of news?"

"But who kidnapped him?" demanded Nancy childishly.

"How under the sun do we know?" answered Billie.

"I suppose the Duke has lots of enemies. He is a very cruel man,"

observed Mary.

"Where's Feargus?" asked Nancy suddenly.

"He's below. We saw him as we came in, reading the paper. But where have you been, you naughty Nancy-Bell?"

Nancy slipped her arms around Miss Campbell's neck.

"Will you promise not to scold me if I tell you beforehand that I'm sorry if I've been wicked, and I'll never, never do such a thing again?"

she asked in her most beguiling tones.

Miss Campbell was not proof against such coaxing as this.

"Of course, you sweet child," she answered. "And I believe you are genuinely sorry. I see you've been weeping."

Then Nancy related the adventures of the afternoon.

"You see they knew the two Paxtons and Timothy Peppercorn and they were Oxford students and so nice--"

"Eight of them at once?" exclaimed her friends.

Nancy nodded and blushed.

"Why, you must have looked like Queen Elizabeth sailing down the Thames in her royal barge with all her courtiers," laughed Mary Price.

"But the most interesting part is yet to come," continued Nancy. She had saved the tid-bit of Felicia Rivers and Tweedledum till the last. "Isn't it the queerest thing?" she said when she had finished.

"It might be, or it might not be, just as it happens," answered Miss Campbell. "Felicia Rivers may have obtained a position as housekeeper.

They do say that most of the lodging-house keepers in London were formerly housekeepers. But I wonder at any one's engaging a great creature like that to look after his house."

"And you won't write home to mother and father that I have been naughty?" asked Nancy, embracing Miss Campbell.

"No, child, I won't even scold this time. I strongly suspect that the ruin of your best hat was punishment enough."