BESSIE BUYS A JAPANESE FAN 289

CHAPTER XXIII.
MRS. SEFTON HAS ANOTHER VISITOR 303

CHAPTER XXIV.
IN THE COOMBE WOODS 318

OUR BESSIE.

CHAPTER I.

BESSIE MEETS WITH AN ADVENTURE.

It was extremely tiresome!

It was vexatious; it was altogether annoying!

Most people under similar circumstances would have used stronger
expressions, would have bemoaned themselves loudly, or at least
inwardly, with all the pathos of self-pity.

To be nearly at the end of one's journey, almost within sight and sound
of home fires and home welcomes, and then to be snowed up, walled,
imprisoned, kept in durance vile in an unexpected snowdrift--well, most
human beings, unless gifted with angelic patience, and armed with
special and peculiar fortitude, would have uttered a few groans under
such depressing circumstances.

Fortunately, Bessie Lambert was not easily depressed. She was a cheerful
young person, an optimist by nature; and, thanks to a healthy
organization, good digestion, and wholesome views of duty, was not
given to mental nightmares, nor to cry out before she was hurt.

Bessie would have thought it faint-hearted to shrink at every little
molehill of difficulty; she had plenty of what the boys call pluck (no
word is more eloquent than that), and a fund of quiet humor that tided
her safely over many a slough of despond. If any one could have read
Bessie's thoughts a few minutes after the laboring engine had ceased to
work, they would have been as follows, with little staccato movements
and pauses:

"What an adventure! How Tom would laugh, and Katie too! Katie is always
longing for something to happen to her; but it would be more enjoyable
if I had some one with me to share it, and if I were sure father and
mother would not be anxious. An empty second-class compartment is not a
particularly comfortable place on a cold afternoon. I wonder how it
would be if all the passengers were to get out and warm themselves with
a good game of snowballing. There is not much room, though; we should
have to play it in a single file, or by turns. Supposing that, instead
of that, the nice, white-haired old gentleman who got in at the last
station were to assemble us all in the third-class carriage and tell us
a story about Siberia; that would be nice and exciting. Tom would
suggest a ghost story, a good creepy one; but that would be too dismal.
The hot-water