CHAPTER VIII

THE BOY AT THE STATION

Bess was in a great bustle as the train slowed down for Freeling. She gathered all their possessions, that nothing might be missed this time, and then started for the door with only her shopping-bag and raincoat.

"You're forgetting something, Bess," cried Nan.

"Oh, no!" returned her chum, her eyes opening very wide and very innocently. "Can't be possible. Suit-case, bag, coats, lunch box--I wish you would throw _that_ away, Nan! Sure, that's everything."

"Yes. But you forget I'm not a dray-horse," Nan said drily. "Come on and take your share of the load for once."

"Oh! I forgot," murmured Bess, faintly, as Nan proceeded to load her down.

They got out on the platform and the train steamed away. Professor Krenner had disappeared. They did not know that he had remained aboard the train, which stopped at a flag-station a mile up the track--a point nearer to his cabin than Freeling proper.

There were a few bustling passengers in sight, but none of them were girls. Even Linda Riggs had disappeared.

"What shall we do?" asked Bess, helplessly. "Not a soul to meet us, Nan!"

"Well, you didn't expect all the girls would turn out with a brass band to greet us, did you?" chuckled Nan.

"But surely there must be some means of conveyance to the Hall!"

"Shank's mare, maybe," returned her cheerful chum.

"You can laugh!" cried Bess, as though she considered Nan's serenity a fault. "But I don't want to climb away up that hill to-night in the dark, and with this heavy old suit-case."

"Quite right. That would be too big a premium placed upon education," laughed Nan. "Let us ask."

A man with a visored cap who was hurrying past at this juncture, was halted and questioned.

"'Bus for the Hall? Yes, Miss. Just the other side of the station if it hasn't already gone," he said.

"There! we've lost it," complained Bess, starting on a run.

"Impossible! How could we lose it when we never have had it?"

"Oh, you can be funny----"

They rounded the corner of the station just as a pair of slowly-moving horses attached to a big, lurching omnibus, were starting forward. The man driving them leaned down from the seat, speaking to somebody inside the 'bus.

"Sure there ain't no more of you to-night, Miss?" he asked. "Dr. Prescott said----"

"I know there's no more of me, Charley," Miss Linda Riggs' voice interrupted tartly. "And if you don't hurry along you won't get your usual tip, I can tell you _that_!"

"Oh!" murmured Bess, hanging back.

"She's trying to run away with the school 'bus," declared Nan, in some anger. "Now, she sha'n't do that, Bess!"

"Let her go," begged Bess. "I don't want to ride with her."

"Pshaw! I'm not dying for her company, either," Nan confessed. "But I want to get up to that Hall to-night."

The omnibus had completely turned around, heading away from the station.

"Hi, there!" cried Nan.

"Drive on, Charley," commanded Linda Riggs, loudly.

The 'bus driver evidently did not hear Nan's call. The latter dropped her bag and tossed her own coat to Bess.

"I'm not going to let him get away from us," she cried.

But Bess seized her arm. "Oh, don't! Let's not have another quarrel with that Riggs girl right here."

"Dear me! I haven't quarreled with her at all, yet," said Nan, somewhat amused.

"She's--so--mean," began Bess, when Nan interrupted:

"Well! we'll just beat her to it at that!"

"Oh, how, Nan?"

"We'll get there first."

"But, _how_?" asked her chum again.

Several automobiles were standing beside the platform and Nan swiftly approached the driver of the nearest one.

"Do you know how to get to Lakeview Hall?" she asked of this person.

"Why--yes," he said. "Of course."

Nan saw that he was only a young boy; but he wore gauntlets, had goggles attached to his cap, and was evidently old enough to drive the car.

"Can you take us up there?" Nan asked.

"Why--yes," again rather doubtfully.

"Come on, Bess!" called Nan, with satisfaction. "We'll beat that Linda Riggs after all."

"Oh, I say!" murmured the youthful automobile driver.

But Nan paid little attention to him. Having engaged him for the trip she hustled Bess and the baggage into his car without another word to him. Finally she leaped in, too, and banged the door of the tonneau.

"There! we're all ready," she said to the boy.

"Oh--well--if you say so," he murmured, and obediently cranked up and then stepped into the car himself.

"Say!" whispered Nan to Bess. "He's an awfully slow thing, isn't he? I don't see how he makes any money tooling people around in this auto."

"What's bothering _me_," whispered Bess, "is how we're going to pay him? I haven't but twenty cents left. You know I bought candy on the train, beside that lunch."

"Not having wasted my money in riotous living," laughed Nan, "I can pay him all right."

The automobile whisked through the streets of the lower town in a few moments. They passed the lumbering 'bus with a scornful toot of the horn. In the suburbs they went even faster, although they were climbing the bluff all the time.

Lakeview Hall was alight now, and as they approached it between the great granite posts at the foot of the private driveway it looked more friendly.

A honk of the automobile-horn in notification of their approach, and immediately the cluster of incandescent lights under the reflector on the great front porch blazed into life. The wide entrance to the Hall, and all the vicinity, was radiantly illumined.

"Goodness!" ejaculated Nan. "I guess they do meet us with a brass band!"

For, with shouts of welcome, and a great flutter of frocks and ribbons, a troop of girls ran out of the Hall to welcome the newcomers.

"Here she is, girls!"

"Walter's the boy to do an errand right!"

"Weren't we the thoughtful bunch to send him after you?"

"Hey, Linda! we're going to have the same old room, Mrs. Cupp says."

The automobile came to a stop. The boy driver drawled:

"Some mistake, girls. I didn't see Linda Riggs at all. But here's a couple of new ones."

Bess had uttered a horrified gasp; but Nan was almost convulsed with laughter. She could usually appreciate the funny side of any situation; and to her mind this most certainly was funny!

It was plain that Linda Riggs was popular enough with some of her schoolmates to have them welcome her with special eclat. They had engaged this boy with the automobile to meet her at the station.

In place of Linda, arriving in the motor car, Nan and Bess had usurped her place; while even now the old 'bus was rumbling up the driveway with Linda inside.

"Goodness! who can they be?" remarked one of the girls, staring at Nan and Bess.

The former was quite composed as, with her own and Bess Harley's possessions about her on the lower of the four broad steps leading up to the veranda, she drew out her purse to pay the boy for the trip from the station.

"How much?" she asked him, without observing the surprised group in her rear.

"Why--I----It's nothing," stammered the young chauffeur.

"Oh, yes it is!" exclaimed Nan. "Of course you have some regular charge--even if you were not there at the station just to meet _us_."

"No--o, I don't," he declared. "There's nothing to pay."

"But there _must_ be!" cried Nan, a little wildly. "Surely you run a public car?"

"No. This is my father's car," admitted the boy, whom Nan now saw was a very good looking boy and very well dressed. "I was just down there to meet a friend----"

"Yes, and I don't see how you missed her, Walter," interrupted the girl behind Nan, and who had spoken before. "For here is Linda now, in Charley's old 'bus."

"Oh my!" murmured Bess.

Nan began to feel great confusion herself. It was not so funny, after all!

"Why--why, then you do _not_ have this car for hire?" she asked.

"No, ma'am," said the boy, meekly. He was looking at Nan Sherwood admiringly, for she made a very pretty picture standing there in the strong glow of the electric light. "But I didn't mind bringing you up--not at all."

"Oh!" gasped Nan.

"You are an awful chump, Walter," observed the girl who had spoken before. "Grace said you could do an errand right; but it seems you're quite as big a dunce as your sister."

"Grace is not a dunce, Cora Courtney!" exclaimed the boy, with some show of spirit, as he started his car, not having shut off his engine. "Good night," he said to Nan, and was gone around the curve of the drive as Charley brought his lazy horses to a halt before the door.

"Here I am, girls!" cried Linda Riggs, putting her head out of the 'bus window. Then she saw Nan and Bess standing on the steps of the portico, and she demanded involuntarily:

"How did those two girls get here ahead of me?"