Nevertheless she kissed her daughter tenderly, just before the train started, and Bess forgot for a moment that she was anything but a young girl going a long way off from a very dear and indulgent mother. They clung to each other for that tender, heart-breaking moment, and Nan Sherwood's eyes overflowed in sympathy.
Nan had been through the same ordeal six months before, when her own dear mother and father had started for Scotland, while she left Tillbury on the very same day for her uncle Henry's backwoods home in the heart of the Upper Michigan forest.
"Don't cry, Bess," she begged her chum when the train was out of the station and the "clip, clip, clip-py-ti-clip" of the wheels over the rail joints had tailed off into a staccato chatter, scarcely discernible through the steady drumming of the great trucks under the chair-car. "Don't cry. You know, honey, your mother isn't going to be near as far from you as my dear Momsey is from me."
"I don't care," sniffed Bess. "If I can't see her. But oh, Nan Sherwood!" she added sharply. "What kind of grammar was that you just used--'_near as far_'? If Mr. Mangel, our high-school principal at Tillbury, thought you would use such language he would never have written to Dr. Beulah Prescott that he considered you entitled to a rating equal with the remainder of our class."
"Don't sniff and turn up your nose, Miss, at my diction," laughed Nan. "Your nose is bound to be red if you keep on--and your eyes, too."
"Is it--are they _what_?" demanded Nan, rather startled.
"Well! talk about grammar!" ejaculated Nan. "I wouldn't criticise, if I were you."
"Never mind the English language," begged Bess. "Let me look in your mirror."
Of course, that necessitated the opening of the brand new bag. Then, when Bess thought she had discovered a suspicious redness of the tip of her nose, she must needs use the powder puff which was one of the wonderful "didos" among the toilet requisites in the bag.
While Bess was so busily engaged in restoring the havoc made upon her fresh young countenance by her recent emotion, there sounded suddenly a heavy banging and thumping underneath the chair-car in which the girls were riding, though not at their end of the coach.