"Here, here, you children, stop your bickering," cried Nan, "and look around to see if you have left nothing behind. We must start pretty soon."
"I'm all ready," declared Jean.
"So am I," echoed Jack. But at the last moment there was discovered a hair ribbon and a handkerchief of hers which had to be poked into her mother's bag.
"To think this is the end of our travels, and that the next thing will be to take the steamer for home," said Jo in a woebegone voice when they were settled in the train. "What next, I wonder."
"There is a great deal of talk over all of us," said Nan, "but no one seems exactly to know about next year."
"I think mother and Aunt Helen intend to give themselves up to the subject on the steamer," remarked Mary Lee.
"They're saving it up to keep them from getting seasick," said Nan. "It will be so absorbing, you see, that they won't be able to think of anything else."
"Well," said Jo, "there is one thing; I hope wherever you go that I can go, too."
"Even if it is back to the Wadsworth school?" said Mary Lee.