"I think I'd rather surprise them, wouldn't you, Edna?"
"It won't be such a big surprise, for mother knows we are coming some time to-day."
"Then there is no use in sending word ahead," decided Dorothy. "They will be looking for us anyway."
Just here Mr. Ramsey came up. "Well, young ladies," he said, "so you are going to leave me. I think this young man can be trusted to take care of you the rest of the way, and I hope as soon as [175]Jennie gets back you will come in to see her. We have all enjoyed having you with us, and I hope you will feel perfectly at home in our house always."
The little girls thanked him and said they had had a very happy time and wouldn't he tell Jennie to come out to see them as soon as she returned. So they parted, and then there was the rush of getting to the train and the pleasant sense of knowing this was the last stage of their journey. Ben whiled away the time by asking them ridiculous conundrums which made them so hilarious that more than one fellow traveller smiled in sympathy with their merry laughs.
The more absurd the conundrums the better the children liked them, and those that Ben made up as they went along pleased them best of all. "When is a fence not a fence?" asked Ben and the answer was, "when it's an advertisement." "What would you do if company came and there were no more tea in the teapot?" was the next question.
"I'd send out for more tea," responded Dorothy.
"What would you do, Ande?"
"I don't know. What would you?"
"I'd add hot water and serve just as the sign tells you to do."