Hesba Stretton - The Ultimate Christmas Library - 100+ Authors, 200 Novels, Novellas, Stories, Poems and Carols

Mr. and Mrs. Sherwood had been more than a little worried by Nan’s delay in getting home and Mr. Sherwood was at the station to meet the train when it finally steamed into Tillbury.

Owneyville, which the girls knew to be Mr. Bulson’s home town, was a station beyond Tillbury, and a much smaller town. The fat man had to change cars, so it was not surprising that he stepped down upon the Tillbury platform just as Nan ran into her father’s arms.

“Oh, Papa Sherwood!” Nan almost sobbed.

“My dear Nancy!” he returned, quite as much moved.

And just then Mr. Bulson appeared beside them. “Well, Sherwood!” the fat man growled, “have you come to your senses yet?”

Robert Sherwood’s face flushed and he urged Nan away along the snowy platform. “I don’t care to talk to you, Bulson,” he said shortly.

“Well, you will talk to me!” exclaimed the angry fat man. “I’ll get you into court where you’ll have to talk.”

Mr. Sherwood kept right on with Nan and Bulson was left fuming and muttering on the platform. Bess had already been put into the family sleigh and was being whisked home. Nan and her father tramped briskly through the snowy streets toward “the little dwelling in amity,” which Nan had not seen since leaving Tillbury for her Uncle Henry Sherwood’s home at Pine Camp, ten months before.

“Oh, dear , Papa Sherwood!” gasped Nan. “What is the matter with that horrid man? He says the most dreadful things about you!”

“What’s that?” demanded her father, quickly. “What do you know about Bulson?”

“More than I really want to know about him,” said Nan, ruefully. She related briefly what had happened a few days before on Pendragon Hill. “And when he called you a rascal, I— oh! I was very, very angry! What did he mean, Papa Sherwood?”

But her father postponed his explanation until later; and it was really from her mother that Nan heard the story of Mr. Sherwood’s trouble with Ravell Bulson. Mrs. Sherwood was very indignant about it, and so, of course, was Nan.

A week or more before, Mr. Sherwood had had business in Chicago, and in returning took the midnight train. The sleeping car was side-tracked at Tillbury and when most of the passengers were gone the man in the berth under Mr. Sherwood’s began to rave about having been robbed. His watch and roll of banknotes had disappeared.

The victim of the robbery was Mr. Ravell Bulson. Mr. Bulson had at once accused the person occupying the berth over his as being the guilty person. Nan’s father had got up early, and had left the sleeping car long before Mr. Bulson discovered his loss.

The railroad and the sleeping car company, of course, refused to acknowledge responsibility for Mr. Bulson’s valuables. Nor on mere suspicion could Mr. Bulson get a justice in Tillbury to issue a warrant for Mr. Sherwood.

But Ravell Bulson had been to the Sherwood cottage on Amity Street, and had talked very harshly. Besides, the fat man had in public loudly accused his victim of being dishonest.

Mr. Sherwood’s reputation for probity in Tillbury was well founded; he was liked and respected; those who really knew him would not be influenced by such a scandal.

But as Mr. Sherwood was making plans to open an agency in Tillbury for a certain automobile manufacturing concern, he feared that the report of Mr. Bulson’s charge would injure his usefulness to the corporation he was about to represent. To sue Bulson for slander would merely give wider circulation to the story the fat man had originated.

Ravell Bulson was a traveling man and was not often in Tillbury— that was one good thing. He had a reputation in his home town of Owneyville of being a quarrelsome man, and was not well liked by his neighbors.

Nevertheless a venomous tongue can do a great deal of harm, and a spiteful enemy may sometimes bring about a greater catastrophe than a more powerful adversary.

“Now! what do you know about this?” Bess Harley demanded, with considerable vexation.

“Of course, it’s a mistake— or else that big clock’s wrong,” declared Nan Sherwood.

“No fear of a railroad clock’s being wrong,” said her chum, grumpily. “That old time table was wrong. They’re always wrong. No more sense to a time table than there is to a syncopated song. It said we were to arrive in this station three-quarters of an hour ago— and it turns out that it meant an entirely different station and an entirely different train.”

Nan laughed rather ruefully. “I guess it is our own fault and not the time table’s. But the fact remains that we are in the wrong place, and at the wrong time. Walter and Grace, of course, met that other train and, not finding us, will have gone home, not expecting us till to-morrow.”

“Goodness, what a pickle!” Bess complained. “And how will we find the Mason’s house, Nan Sherwood?”

The chums had the number and street of their friends’ house, but it occurred to neither of them to go to a telephone booth and call up the house, stating the difficulty they were in. Nor did the girls think of asking at the information bureau, or even questioning one of the uniformed policemen about the huge station.

“Now, of course,” Nan said firmly, “some street car must go within walking distance of Grace’s house.”

“Of course, but which car?” demanded Bess.

“That is the question, isn’t it?” laughed Nan.

“One of these taxi-cabs could take us,” suggested Bess.

“But they cost so much,” objected her friend. “And we can’t read those funny clocks they have and the chauffeur could overcharge us all he pleased. Besides,” Nan added, “I don’t like their looks.”

“Looks of what— the taxis?”

“The chauffeurs,” responded Nan, promptly.

“We-ell, we’ve got to go somehow— and trust to somebody,” Bess said reflectively. “I wonder should we go to that hotel where we stayed that week with mother? They would take us in I suppose.”

“But goodness! why should we be so helpless?” demanded Nan. “I’m sure two boys would start right out and find their way to Grace’s.”

“Would you dare ?” cried Bess.

“Why not? Come on! We don’t want to spend all our money in taxi fares. Let’s go over there and ask that car man who seems to be bossing the conductors and motormen.”

The girls, with their handbags, started across the great square before the station. Almost at once they found themselves in a tangle of vehicular traffic that quite confused Bess, and even troubled the cooler-headed Nan.

“Oh, Nan! I’m scared!” cried her chum, clinging with her free hand to Nan’s arm.

“For pity’s sake, don’t be foolish!” commanded Nan. “You’ll get me excited, too— Oh!”

An automobile swept past, so near the two girls that the step brushed their garments. Bess almost swooned. Nan wished with all her heart that they had not so recklessly left the sidewalk.

Suddenly a shrill voice cried at her elbow: “Hi, greeny! you look out, now, or one of these horses will take a bite out o’ you. My! but you’re the green goods, for fair.”

Nan turned to look, expecting to find a saucy street boy; but the owner of the voice was a girl. She was dirty-faced, undersized, poorly dressed, and ill-nourished. But she was absolutely independent, and stood there in the crowded square with all the assurance of a traffic policeman.

“Come on, greenies,” urged this strange little mortal (she could not have been ten years old), “and I’ll beau you over the crossing myself. Something’ll happen to you if you take root here.”

She carried in a basket on her arm a few tiny bunches of stale violets, each bunch wrapped in waxed paper to keep it from the frost. Nan had seen dozens of these little flower-sellers of both sexes on the street when she had passed through Chicago with her Uncle Henry the winter before.