“But what about Feargus, Cousin Helen?” asked Billie. “Were we not to meet him in time for tea?”
“He is a firebrand young Irishman who is conducting us on this trip.”
Now, it so happened that the two Paxtons had an important engagement that would take them away for half an hour and Timothy was to do the honors of their lodgings until their return. Billy and Elinor had already strolled on ahead with the Paxtons; so that there was really no objection to be made, when Nancy offered to go back to the hotel and look for Feargus.
“The real reason I want to go,” she confided to Miss Campbell, “is to change my hat. I can’t bear this ugly old motor hat I am wearing, and if I had on the one with the pink lining, I’d feel much happier.”
“Very well, dear,” said Miss Campbell, smiling indulgently over Nancy’s vanities, “go along and get your other hat if it will improve your state of mind.”
“First show me exactly how to get to the lodgings,” Nancy asked of Timothy.
“You can’t miss it,” he said. “You have only to come back on this same street. Do you see that gray house over there with the white steps and the white front door? Ring the bell and ask for our rooms and the maid will show you up. Have you got it straight?”
“Certainly,” answered Nancy. “My mind is active enough to grasp a gray house with white front steps and a maid to show me up.”
With an impudent toss of her head, she hastened away on her errand, already in her mind’s eye putting on the hat with the pink lining, under the drooping brim of which she felt herself to become an irresistible person.
Feargus was not at the hotel. He had left a note stating that he had gone for a walk and would be back in time for dinner. Nancy felt irritated. He was a moody soul, that Irishman: one day in high spirits and the next in the depths. She pinned on the hat and looked at herself in the glass.
Now really, how pretty she was! What a beguiling face, to be sure! Her cheeks seemed pinker under the shadow of the drooping rose-lined brim, and her laughing blue eyes added luster to the soft oval of her face.
“I think I am looking rather well,” she said to herself, patting a curl or two and giving her gray brilliantine frock a little jerk, as she hurried out again.