"Then you'll love me 'harder' than you do now if I give you a ride up to the house?" he asked.
"Oh, yes, yes!" she cried, and she laughed gayly as she rode in triumph up the driveway, and into the house.
The evening was spent in the big living-room, with a small fire blazing in the fireplace. It had been warm and sunny all day, but when evening came, an east wind had risen, and the happy little party was glad to sit cosily in doors. Dorothy and Nancy listened entranced while Mrs. Dainty and Aunt Charlotte told of their travels. They had been south, they had been west, and they had brought home beautiful souvenirs of every place at which they had stayed.
Then Dorothy and Nancy told of the life at Glenmore, of the new friends that they had met, and of Arabella and Patricia.
It was a happy evening.
Mr. Dainty had found it impossible to reach home until a week later, but he had written a longer letter than usual, and had sent one especially to Dorothy, and it seemed almost as if he were really talking to her as she read it.
Bright and early next morning Mollie and Flossie raced over to the Stone House, and the four chattered so fast, that the old gardener at work near the fountain, took off his hat, and for a moment stood listening. He was not near enough to know what they were saying, but he heard their happy voices, now talking, now laughing, and he spoke his thoughts.
"Hear that now, hear that! An' will any man tell me that a garding is a reel garding widout the sound o' merry voices? Sure, it's been so still here the past few weeks that I begun ter talk ter meself, just ter break the stillness, but it didn't do the trick, fer me voice ain't what yo calls 'moosicle.' Oh, hear them now! It does me good, so it does."
There was news, and a plenty of it to tell, and when Dorothy and Nancy had told the happenings at Glenmore, Mollie and Flossie took their turn, and related all the Merrivale news.
"You know Sidney Merrington used to be so lazy last winter that he didn't get on at all at school," said Flossie. "Arithmetic was all that really vexed him, but because he had low marking for that, he wouldn't try hard to do anything else.