"That's better," he said with satisfaction. "Now we're friends. And, remember, I'm always ready to give advice or listen. That's what fathers and uncles are for, you know. And I'd like to have you look on me as a second Uncle Dick."
Thus encouraged, Betty briefly outlined for him her story, touching lightly on her experiences at Bramble Farm, but going into detail about Bob Henderson, her uncle, and her pleasant recollections of Pineville.
By the time she had finished, the four girls had joined them on the terrace and presently a table was brought out and spread with a cloth, and, Mrs. Littell following the maid with a silver coffee urn, breakfast was served.
"The girls will want to go into town to-day, I suppose," said the motherly lady, selecting the brownest muffin for Betty and signaling her husband to see that the maid served her an extra portion of omelet. "I have some shopping to do, so I'll go in with them in the car. But I absolutely refuse to 'do' the Monument again."
"Poor mother!" laughed Bobby. "She hates to ride in an elevator, and yet I know by actual count she's gone up in the Monument a dozen times."
"I suppose every one who comes to Washington wants to go sightseeing," said Betty Littell, or, as she must begin to be called now, Libbie, "I know how it is in our little town at home. There's just one monument—erected to some Revolutionary hero—and I get fairly sick of reading the inscription to all the visiting aunts and uncles."
"Well, I like to go around," declared the energetic Bobby. "But just once I had an overdose. We had a solemn and serious young theological student who made notes of everything he saw. He was devoted to walking, and one of his favorite maxims was never to ride when he could walk. He dragged me up every one of those nine hundred steps in the Washington Monument and down again, and I was in bed for two days."
"Wait till you see the steps, and you'll understand," said Louise to Libbie and Betty. "If you try to walk down you're apt to get awfully dizzy."
After breakfast Carter brought the car around, and Mr. Littell hobbled to the door to see them off.
"Betty wants to send a telegram to her uncle," he said in an aside to his wife, while she stood at the long glass in the hall adjusting her veil. "Better help her, for she'll feel that she is doing something. If Gordon is in the oil regions, as I think from what she tells me he is, there isn't much chance of a telegram reaching him any quicker than a letter. However, there's no use in dampening her hopes."