"Then, jest you kape quiet and I'll have ye a bite in three shakes. Run along in and tell Mr. Barker [183]not to be oneasy, that he shall have something right away."
Edna returned to Ben with her tale of cross purposes. "Do you suppose mother will be worried when she gets to Mr. Ramsey's office and finds we haven't come?"
"It is possible she might be. I reckon I'd better telephone in and tell them that we have arrived and if Mrs. Conway comes to tell her we are here. I'll call up your father, too."
"Oh, that will be the very best thing to do."
But Ben learned that Mrs. Conway had been to Mr. Ramsey's office, and not finding her daughter had gone at once to her husband's office. From this latter point it was learned that Mr. and Mrs. Conway and their daughter had just gone out to lunch. "Haven't been gone five minutes," Ben was told. "Say to Mr. Conway when he comes in that his daughter Edna is at home," said Ben and then he hung up the receiver. "Can't get anyone of them," he told Edna, "but your father will hear where you are as soon as he gets back. In the meantime we'll have to make the best of it."
They made the best of it by eating the very good lunch which Lizzie prepared, and then Edna's trunk having arrived she set to work to unpack it, being glad to release Virginia from her long confinement. Next it seemed a good plan to hunt up her old dolls and introduce them to this lovely new sister.
[184] Ben, who had grown tired of waiting for his aunt and cousin, went to the house of one of his friends, and after Edna had seen that all her children were in good condition she seated herself at one of the front windows to watch for her mother. It seemed very funny that it should be she who was watching for someone to come instead of someone watching for her. She would not go to Dorothy's for fear she should miss her mother and sister, and likewise for the reason that she felt it would be a very flat report she would have to make to Dorothy of her homecoming.
She sat for what seemed a long time, but at last her patience was rewarded by seeing a group of four coming up the road, and as they drew near she saw that it was not only her own mother and sister, but Dorothy's likewise who had gone to town to meet the travelers.
She could hardly wait to get down stairs, and she heard Celia's surprised voice say, "Why there she is now," and in another minute she was in her mother's arms.
"Why, you little rogue," cried Mrs. Conway, when the hugging and kissing had ceased. "You have certainly stolen a march on us all. How did you get here?"