ght," she promised gaily, "I won't ever do it again. Only come on
and smile, honey. If you knew how pretty you look when you do, you would
never do anything else."

There are very few girls who can withstand an appeal like that, and Bess
was not one of them. A smile replaced the frown immediately and the next
minute she was chatting merrily about their crowded little stateroom and
the two narrow berths, one above the other, wondering with a grimace
whether they would be seasick or not, and so, on and on, till Nan's
momentary depression forsook her and she felt again the thrill that had
quickened her blood as they had stood on the dock, gazing out over the
harbor.

Yet, almost unknown to Nan herself, there lingered in the back of her
mind a strange, uneasy premonition of trouble to come, and again and
again her eyes sought the spot where the bag with Mrs. Bragley's papers
stowed safely inside lay hidden.

"I wonder which one of us is going to take the upper berth," Bess
chattered gaily on. "You had better, Nan, because you're thinner than I.
And then if the berth should cave in it wouldn't hurt you so much
because there would be something soft to fall on. It's a snug little
place, isn't it?"

"Snug is right," said Nan, with a giggle. "You can't turn around without
running in to something."

"That's Linda's fault. She shouldn't have wrecked the heating system at
school in the Palm Beach season. If it had been in December now, or
March, there wouldn't have been such a crowd and we could have had a
real honest to goodness stateroom, instead of this two-by-one hole in
the wall."

"Elizabeth, how shocking," laughed Nan. "You must have been taking
lessons from Walter." And then, for no apparent reason at all, or
perhaps because of the expression in her chum's eyes as they rested
upon her, Nan became suddenly confused and hurriedly changed the
subject.

"Let's go outside," she suggested, rising and making toward the door of
the stateroom, which opened directly out upon the deck. "It--it's
awfully hot in here."

Bess laughed tantalizingly and stretched lazily as she prepared to
follow her chum.

"Nan, honey," she drawled, irrelevantly, or so it seemed to Nan, "you
are a darling, but, oh, you're awfully foolish."

CHAPTER XVIII

A STARTLING REVELATION

It was a wonderful journey, that one to Jacksonville, and one the girls
never forgot. At first the weather was unpleasant, cold and blowy, but
toward th