CHAPTER II

YOU'RE GOING WITH ME

"But do you think the others can go?" Bess asked anxiously when Adair MacKenzie and Alice had driven off in search of Mr. Sherwood. "To bring him home where he belongs when he has visitors," Adair had said.

"What do you think, Momsey?" Nan referred the question to her mother. The three were in the kitchen where Mrs. Sherwood was bustling about preparing a company dinner.

"The good Lord only knows," Mrs. Sherwood shook her head as she sifted more flour on her biscuit dough and then kneaded it lightly and expertly. "I can only tell you two girls this. When Adair MacKenzie sets out to do something, he usually does it. He has a way about him that almost always wins people over to his side."

"Yes, but to Mexico. He wants to take us all to Mexico and he doesn't even know us!" Bess couldn't believe it, not even after seeing and hearing the old Scotchman. "And if I can't believe it," she questioned, "how in the world will the others when they haven't even seen him or heard him talk?"

"Don't you worry, Bessie," Mrs. Sherwood looked affectionately at this girl who was almost a second daughter to her. "They'll be both seeing him and hearing him talk before long now. If I know Adair MacKenzie at all, he'll be at work on this thing before another day is up. And if he's one-half the man he used to be, you might just as well begin packing tonight."

"You mean to say you are sure we will all go?" Bess was incredulous.

"Yes, you'll go and have the grandest time you ever have had," Mrs. Sherwood said confidently. "There never was another man like Adair MacKenzie."

"Then I'm going?" Nan had, despite her cousin's assurance, been somewhat doubtful. She knew that her mother had wanted her to stay at home this summer, that she had been lonesome without her daughter the summer before and was planning all sorts of little surprises for this vacation.

"Go! Of course you're going!" Mrs. Sherwood nearly dropped her biscuit dough in her surprise at Nan's question. "And I shouldn't be a bit surprised if your father and I were to go at least part way with you. Adair said something about it. Aye, but he's a thoughtful soul."

So it came about that Rhoda Hammond, Grace and Walter Mason, Amelia "Procrastination" Boggs, and Laura Polk, all school chums of Bess and Nan, in the days that followed, received telegraphic invitations to spend the summer with Nan in Mexico.

While each of them is laying her plans, packing her clothes and wiring "Santa Claus", as Laura Polk immediately dubbed Cousin Adair, let's briefly review the adventures of Nan Sherwood and her friends up to this point.

Nan was born in Tillbury, a pleasant little town, some distance from any big city, and her early school days were spent with Elizabeth Harley, the only one of Nan's many friends who has followed her through all of her adventures.

In the first book of the series, "Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp" or "The Old Lumberman's Secret" Nan and Bess are pals at Tillbury High School. Here Nan is extremely popular with all of her classmates and excels in sports. She and Bess have grand times together, though the Sherwoods live on a reduced income while Bess, the daughter of one of Tillbury's wealthiest families, has everything that money can buy.

The first big disagreement the girls ever have comes in the opening chapters of this book when Bess, having decided to go away to an exclusive boarding school on the shores of Lake Michigan, tries to induce Nan to go with her. Though Nan wants with all her heart to go, she absolutely refuses to ask her parents because she knows that they cannot afford to let her. She is happy later at her decision, because on the eve of it, she discovers that her father has lost his job in the Tillbury Mills. Everything looks extremely dark for the Sherwoods. Momsey Sherwood is ill and Papa Sherwood, because of his age, is complete at a loss as to know where to turn for a job.

However, when things are darkest, Mrs. Sherwood receives two letters. One from Scotland informs her that she is sole heir of a fortune in Scotland, and the other, from her cousin Adair MacKenzie, whom we have already met, promises her aid until such time as she can collect on her inheritance. With this, Nan's parents leave for Scotland and pack Nan off to Northern Wisconsin where she spends an exciting year in the lumber country with an uncle and aunt. Here, in chapter after chapter that are full of thrills for Nan, those about her, and the reader, the plucky young girl solves a mystery that, in the end, clears her uncle's title to a valuable piece of property.

In the next volume of the series, "Nan Sherwood at Lakeview Hall" or "The Mystery of the Haunted Boathouse" our young heroine goes off to school with Bess. And there never was a nicer school anyplace than Lakeview Hall. Situated on a bluff overlooking the lake it's like an old castle. Mrs. Cupp, assistant to Dr. Beulah Prescott, is the keeper and the girls, early in the volume, learn to respect her, if not to admire her. Here, they make the acquaintance of a number of new friends.

There are Grace Mason and her brother Walter, children of a wealthy Chicago family; Laura Polk, a red-headed girl whose lively imagination and ready tongue are constantly getting her into difficulties; Amelia Boggs, a serious book-loving soul with a roomful of clocks; and finally, Linda Riggs, a snobbish, spoiled child, who is extremely jealous of Nan and her well-deserved popularity.

Last, but not least, there is the boathouse ghost around whom is woven a mystery that brings Nan and Walter Mason together in such a way that they develop a keen admiration for one another. This book is chock full of adventure, excitement and mystery and Lakeview Hall is the center of it all.

Her friendship with Grace and Walter bring about her next big experience, a visit to Chicago. In "Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays" or "Rescuing the Runaways" the Lakeview Hall crowd spends Christmas vacation in Grace Mason's palatial Chicago home. The story of Nan's meeting with a very famous movie star and her solution to the mystery surrounding the strange disappearance of two young farm girls who have come to the city to go into the movies is recounted in this volume.

Next, Nan and her friends go off on a visit to a western ranch, the home of Rhoda Hammond, a school chum. Here the northern girls get their first taste of what it is to live in the wide open spaces of the west. The story of lost treasure that is told in this volume of the series, "Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch" or "The Old Mexican's Treasure" is one that no admirer of plucky Nan Sherwood would want to miss.

The year that follows this western adventure is a pleasant one at Lakeview Hall and at its end, we find Nan and her friends trekking off to Florida and Palm Beach. So, in "Nan Sherwood at Palm Beach" or "Strange Adventures Among the Orange Groves" in a background of wide sandy beaches, beautiful graceful palms, and a hotel that overlooks the sea, a villain who has tried to cheat one of Nan's many acquaintances out of her fortune, comes to a well-deserved end, and Nan emerges a heroine once more. At the end of this volume, we find that Walter and Nan are becoming more and more fond of one another, and we see the Lakeview Hall girls teasing them about it again and again.

In the sixth volume, Mrs. Sherwood's Scotch connections bring about an invitation to Nan to visit Scotland and the family estate of her mother's people. Bess is heartbroken that her friend is going away without her. However, she tries to conceal her disappointment and joins with Nan's other friends in planning a grand farewell party. The party proves to be a surprise all round and the great day ends with an announcement by Dr. Prescott that she is taking a party of six girls abroad to see the king and queen of England crowned! Such excitement! Such last minute rush! Such fun! Never was there a happier, more exciting, more adventurous crossing of the ocean than the Lakeview Hall crowd enjoyed on the S. S. Lincoln. And the whole is rounded out in the last chapter with Nan as a lady-in-waiting to the Queen at the coronation. How this all came about is a story that all Nan Sherwood fans will want to read.

It was the part his little cousin had played in the coronation that made Adair MacKenzie resolve to hunt her up. It was this that brought him to Tillbury and the cottage on Amity street on the day the present volume opens.

"Good biscuits!" Adair MacKenzie bit off a piece of their lightness the evening the present story opens. They were all sitting at the Sherwood dinner table. There he sat, chewing reflectively, as he glanced down the table at young Nan.

"So you helped crown the good queen," he remarked, "And it didn't go to your head. You're a good lass. You Blakes," he turned to Mrs. Sherwood now, "were always a bunch of modest creatures. That's why I like you. Now, Bessie there," he pointed to Bess who had stayed for dinner, "she's not so modest, but she's kind and loyal. She's a little spoiled, but she'll get by."

Bess blushed all shades of the rainbow at Adair's frankness. Used to being babied and somewhat pampered at home, his outspokenness troubled her. She felt strangely like crying. Nan caught her eye and smiled encouragingly. Mrs. Sherwood patted her hand beneath the tablecloth. And Alice, well, Alice was a dear, for she turned the conversation toward school, and both Nan and Bess utterly forgot themselves in telling of the horse show in which they had both taken part during the last week at school.

"So you think you can ride, eh?" Adair MacKenzie was secretly pleased at both of the young girls. "Well, we'll see. I'll put you each on a Mexican mule and let you try to climb a mountain and see what happens." He chuckled at the thought.

Alice laughed merrily at this. "Well, you'll never get me on one," she vowed. "Once was enough. Instead of the mule pulling me up the narrow path, I pulled the mule up. I never worked harder in my life."

"Oh, my sweet, you never worked at all." Adair shook his finger at his daughter. "But you'll work this summer--if that old housekeeper of ours keeps her resolution not to go down to that dirty hole which we call a hacienda. The words are hers," he explained to Nan and Bess.

"She once, when she was a very young girl, spent a summer on a sugar beet farm here in the north. A lot of Mexicans worked on it. They were miserably treated and poorly paid. As a result their huts were like hovels. She saw some of them and now she says that wild horses couldn't drag her into that country down there. She'd rather see me starve first. But I'll get her yet." Adair MacKenzie smiled as though he liked opposition. "I'll show her who is boss," he ended.

"Of course you will, daddy," Alice agreed. "But now tell us, when are we going? How long are we going to stay? And whom have you invited?"

This last question put Adair MacKenzie in a corner and he knew it. Really, a very kind and extremely impulsive soul, when he went on these summer jaunts for pleasure he was apt to go about for weeks, inviting all his friends. As a result, no matter how large the house was he rented, it was always too small, and no matter what preparation Alice made for guests, they were always inadequate.

Now, as he sat thinking, a mischievous light came into his eye. "There is only one that I've invited," he teased, "besides these girls that will interest you."

"And that is--?"

"Walker Jamieson, that smart-alecky reporter that we met in San Francisco a couple of years ago. Remember?"

"Remember? Of course I remember and he wasn't smart alecky. He was kind and sweet and--" But Alice didn't finish her sentence, for she became conscious of the fact that all the eyes around the dinner table were on her. She blushed prettily.

"Anyway," she justified herself, "he'll be a help in handling you, for he's smart, almost as smart as you are, daddy."

"A reporter! You mean to say a real newspaper reporter will be down there with us?" Nan couldn't contain herself any longer.

"Yep, a no good reporter." Adair MacKenzie tried hard to look disdainful as he said this, but he didn't succeed very well and both Nan and Bess guessed that he had a genuine regard for the "young scamp" as he called him. "Got to have someone around," he muttered as he drank his coffee, "to help handle you women, even if it's a young scalawag who spends all his time tracking down stories for your worthless newspaper."

"Stories!" Bess and Nan were wide-eyed.

"Now, see here," Adair shook his finger in the direction of the two young girls, "reporters are no good. They're a lazy lot that hang around with their feet on desks pretending to think. Think! Why, I never knew one yet that had a thought worth telling, let alone writing.

"This one that you are going to meet is no better than the rest. M-m-m, and no worse either," he conceded as he noted the expression on Alice's face. "I asked him to come along because he has a knack of making things lively wherever he is.

"Soon's he gets those two big feet of his down off his desk, he makes things hum. That's the way he is, lazy one minute, full of action the next. If there's absolutely nothing happening, he knows how to stir things up. I rather like a man like that--not that I like him," he added hastily, "but if we're going to go across the border this summer, got to have someone like him around. Might just as well be Jamieson as anyone else."

"And will he write stories while we're there and will they be in the paper?" Nan was reluctant to let the conversation about the young reporter drop.

"Never can tell anything about people like him," Adair MacKenzie shook his head as though he would be the last person in the world to predict anything about reporters. Could he have looked into the future he would have shaken it even more violently, for in the next few weeks Walker Jamieson, with the help of Nan and the Lakeview Hall crowd, was to uncover in Mexico one of the biggest stories of the year.