She crossed her hands in an ecstatic little fashion that expressed the greatest excitement and joy.
"You wouldn't mind, would you, Aunt Lucinda? Why, the We Are Sevens wouldn't get over it in a week. It seems too good to be true."
Before Miss Clyde and Blue Bonnet parted with Mr. Winthrop all arrangements had been completed, and Blue Bonnet walked away as if she were treading on air.
That night the following letter found its way into the Boston mail:
"Copley Plaza Hotel, Boston, Mass.,
"November 28th, 19—.
"Dearest Uncle Cliff:—
"Aunt Lucinda and I came up here yesterday to buy my clothes for school, and also to see what kind of a room I was to have when I come up for good the first of January.
"Aunt Lucinda has been awfully nice about everything, letting me get most of the things I wanted. I have some loves of dresses, which I won't take time now to describe, as you will be in Woodford so soon for Christmas and will see them. They will be fresh, too, for Aunt Lucinda says I can't wear any of them until I am at Miss North's. Aunt Lucinda bought me a perfect treasure of a desk—mahogany, with the cunningest shelves underneath for books. She bought me some new books, too—some that I've wanted for a long time. There's 'The Life of Helen Keller;' grandmother has one, and I simply adore it; and Thoreau's 'Week on the Merrimac,' and one or two of Stevenson's—Robert Louis, you know—and a new 'Little Colonel,' my old one is worn to shreds. Oh, yes, and a beautiful new dictionary; it looks too full of information for anything, and there's a perfectly dear atlas with it besides. We got a copy of Helen Hunt's 'Ramona,' too. We don't know yet if Miss North will allow me to have any love stories; but, if she won't, Aunt Lucinda will keep it for me. I wouldn't part with it for anything. We had such fun getting the books; only Aunt Lucinda kept fussing about modern bookstores, and wishing that I might have seen the 'Old Corner Book Store,' where she used to come when she was a girl. She says she used to spend whole days there browsing around—she really said that—and poking under the counters and behind things for what she wanted. Just fancy! I think a nice polite clerk that comes up to you with a pleasant smile and says, 'What can I do for you, Madam?' is much nicer, don't you?
"I've saved the worst of my news for the last. I hope it won't make you unhappy, for there will be some way out of it, I reckon. It's this: I hate the room-mate I've got to have. She's perfectly horrid—you wouldn't like her a bit, Uncle Cliff; and the way she shakes hands—well, it makes you feel as if you were going to have to support her until she got through with the ordeal—so limp, and lack-a-daisy. She's tall and thin, with straw-colored hair and white eyelashes and cold blue eyes, and she's from Bangor, Maine. I tried to talk with her for a minute while Aunt Lucinda and the house-mother were making arrangements about me, but all I could gather was that she was a Senior, and from the State of Maine. Why do you suppose these Easterners always say from the State of something? Seems so much easier to just say Maine.