"Here, here, what's happening back there?" Adair MacKenzie turned from his place next to the driver and frowned at the girls. "Can't have this. No blubbering on this trip."
"Thought you were a brave girl," Adair went on. "Now, dry away those tears," he ended, and turning, resumed his work of instructing the driver as to how to drive.
It was Laura who unthinkingly started them all off again.
"Makes you think, doesn't it," she remarked, "of the number of things you overlook doing for your mother when you're around her? Will I ever be good," she continued, "when I get home. I'll wash the dishes, set the table, run to the store, do anything and everything without question."
Laura sounded so serious and so unlike herself in her seriousness that even Nan had to smile, as she agreed. "That's just the way it makes me feel," she said.
"Oh, Nan," Bess protested, "and you're always so good to your mother. I'm the one that's mean. Why, I never do a thing around the house if I can help it." And Bess spoke the truth. The daughter of a family that had plenty of money, Bess was a pampered child. As a general rule, she had little regard for either of her parents. Whatever she wanted, she asked for without regard for cost. What she couldn't get from her mother, she frequently managed to get from her father, and the two were well on the way toward spoiling her utterly when she went off to Lakeview with Nan.
There, away from home among strangers in a place where she had to live up to certain well-defined rules, Bess had improved considerably. Those that have watched her since her first appearance in "Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp" have seen a change come over her gradually. She is a little more thoughtful, a little more considerate of other people, but she still has a selfish streak which at times like the present confronts her so that her conscience pricks her sharply.
"When I get home," Bess spoke more quietly than was her wont, "I'm going to do a little reforming myself. I'm going to pay more attention to what mother has to say. I'm going to be a better daughter."
"And I," Grace and Amelia said this together.
So even while Rhoda Hammond in a plane that was winging its way toward her western home, was remembering little, dear things about the mother she was so fond of, her friends were thinking of her and making resolution after resolution about their own conduct toward their parents.