"It's so nice and cosy to have the car all to ourselves," sighed Allison, stretching out luxuriously on the sofa. Betty, bending over her embroidery, smiled tenderly at a picture that her memory showed her just then. She was comparing this journey with the first one she had ever taken. And she saw in her thoughts a little brown-eyed girl of eleven, setting forth on her first venture into the wide world, with a sunbonnet tied over her curls, and an old-fashioned covered basket on her arm. What a dread undertaking that journey had been from the Cuckoo's Nest to the House Beautiful. She remembered how frightened she was, and how she had studied the picture of Red Ridinghood, printed in colours on the border of her handkerchief, until she was afraid to speak even to the conductor. She saw a possible wolf in every stranger.
Somehow her thoughts kept going back to that time, even in the midst of Gay's most amusing nonsense, and Kitty's brightest repartee. Even when Allison began to sing "O Warwick Hall," and she chimed in with the others, "Dear Warwick Hall," she was not thinking of school, but of the Cuckoo's Nest, and Davy, and the old weather-beaten meeting-house, in whose window she had passed so many summer afternoons, reading the musty dog-eared books she found in the little red bookcase.
"What are you smiling about, Betty, all to yoahself?" asked Lloyd. "You look as if you are a thousand miles away."
Betty glanced up with a little start. "Oh, I was just thinking about the Cuckoo's Nest, and wishing that I could see Davy's face when they open the Christmas box I sent. There are only trifles in it, but the box will mean a lot to them, for Cousin Hetty never has time to make anything of Christmas."
Lloyd sat up with a sudden exclamation. "Oh, Betty, I beg yoah pah'don. There's a lettah for you in my bag from some of them that I forgot to give you. Hawkins came up with it just as we drove off, and there was so much excitement and confusion I nevah thought of it again till this minute. I'm mighty sorry I forgot."
"It doesn't make any difference," Betty assured her. "Good news can afford to wait, and, if it's bad news, it would have spoiled all the first part of this trip."
She tore open the envelope and glanced down the page. Lloyd, looking up, saw a distressed expression cross her face and the brown eyes fill with tears.
"Oh, it's poor little Davy that's in trouble," said Betty, answering Lloyd's anxious question. "He had his leg badly hurt last week, broken in two places. He was riding one of those heavy old farm horses, hurrying home to get out of a storm. Going down a steep, slippery hill, it stumbled and fell on him. He'll have to lie in bed for weeks, with his knee in plaster, and he's so tired of it already, and so lonesome. Nobody has any time to sit with him. I know how it is. I was sick myself once at the Cuckoo's Nest. Oh, I'd give anything if I could spend my vacation there with him."
"And give up all your good times at home?" cried Kitty. "He surely couldn't expect such a sacrifice as that."
"But it wouldn't be any sacrifice. Not a mite! I haven't seen him for such a long time, and I'd love to go. He used to be the dearest little fellow, never out of my sight a moment during the day. They used to call him 'Betty's shadow.'"