Upstairs, in Mary’s room which was furnished as it had been when she had been there as a child, curly maple set with blue hangings, the two girls changed from riding habits to house dresses. Mary wore a softly clinging blue while Dora donned her favorite and most becoming cherry color.
“One might think that we are expecting company tonight.” Mary was peering into the oval glass as she spoke, arranging her fascinating golden curls above small shell-like ears.
“Which, of course, we are not.” Dora had brushed her black bob, boy-fashion, slick to her head. “There being no near neighbors to drop in.” Then suddenly she exclaimed, “Oh, for goodness sakes alive, I completely forgot that letter. It’s for both of us from Polly and Patsy. I’ve been wondering why they didn’t write and tell us where they had decided to spend their summer vacation.”
Dora sprang up to search for the letter in a pocket of her riding habit. Mary sat near a window in a curly maple rocker as she said dreamily: “If we hadn’t come West, we would have been with them—that is, if they went to Camp Winnichook up in the Adirondacks the way we had planned all winter.”
Dora, holding the letter unopened, sat near her friend and smiled at her reminiscently as she said, “We plan and plan and plan for the future, don’t we, and then we do something exactly different, and most unexpected, but I wouldn’t give up being out here on the desert and living in a ghost town for all the fun Patsy and Polly may be having—”
Mary laughingly interrupted. “Do read the letter and let’s see if they really did go there. Perhaps—”
“Yes, they did.” Dora had unfolded a large, boyish-looking sheet of paper. “Camp Winnichook,” she announced, then she read the rather indolent scrawl. “Dear Cowgirls,”—it began—
“Patsy has just come in from a swim. She’s drying her bathing suit by lying on the sand in front of the cabin in the sun. Her red hair, which she calls ‘a wind blown mop,’ looks, at present, like a mop that has just finished doing the kitchen floor. Last winter, you recall, she had a few red freckles on her saucy pug nose, but now she wears them all over her face and arms and even on her back. She’s a sight to behold!”
There were spatters on the paper that might have been water. The type of penmanship changed. A jerky, uneven handwriting seemed to ejaculate indignantly, “Don’t you kids believe a word of it. I’m a dazzling beauty—as ever! It’s Polly whose looks are ruined—if she ever had any. She won’t play tennis and she won’t swim and she will eat chocolate drops—you know the finish, and she wasn’t any too slim last year when she had to do gym.”
The first penmanship took up the tale. “I had to forcibly push Patsy away. She’s gone in to dress now, so I’ll hurry and get this letter into an envelope and sealed before she gets back because I want to tell on her.