"It's grand, Cousin Adair," Nan answered for them all. "Perfectly grand. There's only one thing that's lacking."
"We're missing Rhoda. She was so excited about the plans to come down here that she could hardly contain herself, and now we won't see her all summer. We won't see her until we get back to school in the fall."
"Who said you wouldn't?" Adair asked suddenly. "Don't jump to conclusions like that. Just to show you how wrong you are--you're leaving tomorrow morning by plane to visit with this Hammond girl over the week end, and then if it's at all possible, she is to come back with you to stay here for a week or two. Now, how's that?"
Nan couldn't answer for a moment, then unexpectedly, even to herself, she threw her arms around Adair MacKenzie's neck and kissed him.
"Tut! Tut!" he straightened his necktie and adjusted the soft white collar of his shirt after her hug. "Can't stand for this. What's the matter? Aren't you pleased?"
"Oh, dear!" Nan's face was flushed and her eyes bright as she answered. "There was never in all this wide world a nicer cousin than you are being to me."
"Wait a second," Adair was immensely pleased at this outburst. "What will these young men all think of you? Want to make them jealous of an old codger like me? Better watch out."
Nan looked at the boys sitting around the ground and in the big comfortable chairs and blushed furiously. She had completely forgotten, at the announcement of her proposed journey that anyone else was present beside the girls whom she knew so well.
But her embarrassment couldn't last long in the face of the excitement.
Nan was going for Rhoda! Nan was going by plane to get Rhoda and bring her back. Nan was going to start the next morning and by Monday she would be back, having flown half the length of Mexico to the border and then from there to Rose Ranch.
It was exciting to think of, but then a thousand, a million times more exciting in reality, for all sorts of unexpected things were to come about as the result of that ride.
Now, Nan could scarcely contain herself as she sat in the group and listened to the little everyday things they were talking about. The only thing that really penetrated her consciousness was the fact that she was leaving and that when she returned Walter and his friends would have left.