Joyce smiled at Jack as the words they were waiting for were repeated, and then almost mechanically used them herself in her answer. "We'll have them once in awhile, I suppose, but we can't afford a very great change in our bill of fare. We'll have a mighty skimpy dinner to-day, for there's not much left over from Sunday, and we'll be too busy washing to stop to cook. But I want to have a big baking before Lloyd comes. If I go in to meet her Wednesday, in the ranch surrey, I'll have to do the extra cooking to-morrow afternoon, I suppose, after the ironing is out of the way."
Mary cast an inquiring glance at the red star on the calendar.
"Only to-day and to-morrow, then I can stay home the day after that when Lloyd comes, and wear my best white dress and my rosebud sash."
"Oh, that will be joyful," chanted Holland, imitating her tone.
"I wish that I were able to help you more with the work," said Mrs. Ware, wistfully. "Then you would have more time for preparation. Norman and I can manage the tent work, I think, this morning. Then I'll go down to the seat under the willows, and finish that Indian head sofa pillow. We must have that done before Lloyd comes."
"Seems to me that I can hardly wait," said Mary, giving an impatient little wiggle that nearly upset her glass of milk.
"I wish Betty were coming, too," said Joyce. "She would be making up stories from morning till night about the strange things out here; but she wouldn't have much peace. You children would never let her out of your sight."
"Like Davy did at the cuckoo's nest," said Mary, who knew Betty's history almost as well as her own, and loved dearly to talk about it. Betty's devotion to her godmother since she had gone to live at Locust, and her wonderful gift for writing verses and stories made her almost as interesting to Mary as the Little Colonel herself. As she moved about the house after breakfast, doing the little duties that fell to her lot before school-time, she chanted in a happy undertone all the play of the "Rescue of the Princess Winsome," from beginning to end.
Sir Feal, the faithful knight, had been associated in her mind with Phil, since the day he rescued her from her fright when she was running away from the Indian. She was the princess, and Phil the gallant knight, who, she dreamed in her romantic little heart, might some day send her messages by the morning-glories and forget-me-nots, as Sir Feal had done. Of course, not now, but some day when she was grown, and wore long, lovely dresses, and had a beautiful voice. She had pictured herself many a time, standing by a casement window with a dove clasped to her breast, and singing the song, "Flutter, and fly, flutter, and fly, bear him my heart of gold."
But now that the real princess was coming, she lost interest in her own little day-dreams, which were of such a far-away time and so vague and shadowy, and began dreaming them for Lloyd. She wondered what Phil would think of her when they first met. She had already recited the entire play to him, and showed him the miniature, and, as he studied the sweet face at the casement, bending over the dove, he had hummed after Mary in an absent-minded sort of way: