“Well, we’ll be over tomorrow to plan that Valentine party for the orphans,” Peg called as the girls trooped away. Then the Colonel’s sleigh bells were heard coming up the drive. Just before she left, Geraldine drew Merry to one side to say in a low voice: “Tell the girls how very grateful I am to them for having taken me in after I had been so unforgivably horrid.”
Merry gave her friend’s hand a loving squeeze. “I think we are the ones to ask forgiveness for the prank we played,” she said; then impulsively added: “Let’s be sister-friends, shall we?”
Gerry felt the tell-tale flush in her cheeks, but Alfred was calling, “Do hurry, Sister. This isn’t good-bye forever.” And so laughingly they parted.
CHAPTER XIX.
SEARCHING FOR CLUES
The next afternoon the girls found Bob waiting near the seminary with the delivery sleigh. Geraldine, for half a moment, was amazed to hear the squeels of delight uttered by her companions as they swarmed up into the straw-covered box part of the cutter.
“This is great!” Merry exclaimed. “How did you happen to do it, Bobbie dear?”
The boy nodded toward his sister, who replied for him: “Bob said he would be returning from Dorchester about this hour, and I asked him to pick us up, like an angel child, so that we could have a longer meeting. It gets dark so early and it takes a full half hour to walk the mile to Merry’s.”
“Sort of a ruddy-looking angel child,” Rose, at the boy’s side, teased him. The round, pleasant face of the boy was always ruddy, but today it was unusually so, partly because of the long drive he had had in the frosty air and partly because of his pleasure at having Rose with him.
Down the wide, snow-covered road they sped, and Geraldine could not but compare this ride with those that were being taken by the pupils of the Dorchester Seminary, where most fashionable turnouts each day awaited the closing hours. But she had to honestly confess that she was having much more fun than she ever had before. Merry smiled across at her and Gerry smiled back, happily recalling the whispered request of the evening before: “Let us be sister-friends, shall we?”
“All out for Merry-dale!” Bob was soon calling as he drew rein in front of the Lee house. Then to the girl at his side he said in a low voice, “I’ll be through at the store at five. May I drive you home?”