"What were you doing when I came up?" asked Louis.
"We weren't doing anything in particular. It is Jennie's afternoon to choose—we take turns in choosing how we will spend our afternoons, you see—and she hadn't made up her mind exactly." Edna looked inquiringly at Jennie as if to ask what the program was to be.
Jennie, like the little lady she was, turned to Louis. "What would you like to do?" she asked.
"Oh, I don't know." Louis looked a little embarrassed at being thus appealed to. "What do you generally do?"
[61] "Sometimes we get Cap'n Si to take us out rowing, sometimes we go for a drive, and if no one else is going to use the automobile, mother will let Mack take us out in that, but I am afraid she is going to use it this afternoon. We could take the pony, though, or we could go out in the boat."
"Have you a boat of your own? I can row," Louis returned.
"No, I haven't a boat of my own, but papa says I shall have one when I am old enough. He never lets anyone take me out but Cap'n Si."
"Ho," exclaimed Louis, "I could take you as well as not."
Here Jennie became quite dignified and drew herself up to her small height. "I believe it is my afternoon to choose," she said turning to the two girls; "I think we'd better go to drive. I will tell Peter to bring up the pony and cart in half an hour." She walked away toward the stables, Dorothy joined her and Edna was left with her cousin feeling half indignant with Louis and half miffed with the girls. Why couldn't they have asked her and Louis to go to the stables? They might have known Louis, being a boy, would be interested in the horses.
She was roused from her thoughts by Louis who said, "I say, Edna, you don't want to go to drive, do you? It's stupid to just go driving up and down the roads; it's lots more exciting to go out in a boat. I like a sail-boat, don't you?"