"I'm awfully glad you had a good time," said Jennie earnestly, "but if I had known what was [100]going on I should have been very unhappy. We didn't have a very good time as it was, did we, Dorothy?"
"No, we didn't," Dorothy agreed. "We missed you, Edna, and we were out of sorts all the time. Please stay with us next time."
"I think Edna will do that," said Mrs. Ramsey gently, "for I think we must make a rule that no one of you is to go anywhere that you cannot all go, and then you will all be safer."
Edna felt that this was a very good rule, and was sure that Mrs. Ramsey had made it for her protection, since now she could always say to Louis, "No, I can't go unless the others do." So she looked up in Mrs. Ramsey's face and said, "I like that rule."
Mrs. Ramsey smiled down at her. "I am glad you do."
However, so far as Louis went, there was little need of rules, for he kept away several days, having found a playmate in the person of a boy of about his own age who had come to the hotel to spend a few weeks. "The boy's father had a boat, a sail boat," Louis informed the girls when he saw them, and Louis was invited to go out every day in it, so any other amusement which they could offer paled before this.
At the end of the week Mr. Ramsey came up for a longer stay than before, and who should appear in the harbor about the same time but Edna's big boy [101]cousin, Ben Barker. Everybody liked Ben, for he was an entirely different sort of somebody from Louis. He had come up with some of his college friends on a yacht, but was frequently ashore.
"I thought no one less than the King of Spain had arrived," declared Mr. Ramsey when he beheld the tumultuous welcome given Ben by the three little girls.
"He is much nicer than the King of Spain," Jennie told him.
"And this from my own daughter whose father has just arrived," said Mr. Ramsey laughing. "You are certainly a popular young man, Mr. Barker."