"Yes, and I hope they don't treat us as we treat them sometimes," Nan added.
"Well, they hadn't better," Bess retorted indignantly, as all the girls joined heartily in laughing at her. Bess laughed too, when she realized what she had said, "What I mean is--"
"Never mind, Bessie," Nan comforted. "We know you are not as rude as you sound, and that you don't mean half of what you say," she ended teasingly.
"Oh, I don't care what you say," Bess returned nobly, "I feel so happy that I am going to be on that boat with all of you that there is nothing that you could say that would bother me."
"Not even," Laura goaded her, "the statement that we are going over cabin class while Linda Riggs is going first class on the same boat."
"It's not true," Bess denied without thinking.
"Of course it isn't, Bess," Rhoda looked reprovingly across at Laura. "No one has heard a thing about Linda for months now. She might just as well be living in another world so far as we are concerned."
"I wish she was." Bess pouted somewhat as she made the statement. The truth was that she was secretly triumphant at the thought that if Linda was going to Europe, she was too. She half hoped that somewhere they would meet, that sometime she would be able to embarrass Linda as Linda had frequently, in the past embarrassed her. But even as the thought crossed her mind, Nan whisked it away by saying, "I wonder what it will all be like!"
"Oh, Nan, there's so much to do before we go that I sometimes think we never will get started!" Bess exclaimed to her roommate one morning several weeks later.
She was sitting on the floor sorting a boxful of things she had been saving for her memory book and was holding the dance program of the Grand Guard Ball they had attended during their first year at Lakeview, when she spoke.
"Nan, aren't you listening to what I say?" she asked without looking up. She flourished the dance program in the air. "Doesn't this bring up memories though," she said half wistfully. "When I remember what a jewel Walter was that night, I'm almost jealous," she went on.
Again there was no answer. Bess looked up.
"Why, Nan Sherwood, whatever is the matter?" she cried when she saw the expression on Nan's face. Dropping the things in her lap on the floor, she got up and went over to the day-bed where Nan was reading a letter.