"Oh, but we're coming back—after we've been taught all manner of necessary things."
"Edna'll be the only one of you girls left behind; it's rough on her."
"It certainly is; we'll all have to write her heaps of letters."
"Much time there'll be for letter-writing, outside of the home ones," Tom said.
"Speaking of time," Josie turned towards them, "we're going to be busier than any bee ever dreamed of being, before or since Dr. Watts."
They certainly were busy days that followed. So many of the young folks were going off that fall that a good many of the meetings of "The S. W. F. Club" resolved themselves into sewing-bees, for the girl members only.
"If we'd known how jolly they were, we'd have tried them before," Bell declared one morning, dropping down on the rug Pauline had spread under the trees at one end of the parsonage lawn.
Patience, pulling bastings with a business-like air, nodded her curly head wisely. "Miranda says, folks mostly get 'round to enjoying their blessings 'bout the time they come to lose them."
"Has the all-important question been settled yet, Paul?" Edna asked, looking up from her work. She might not be going away to school, but even so, that did not debar one from new fall clothes at home.
"They're coming to Vergennes with me," Bell said. "Then we can all come home together Friday nights."