“Oh, Bumble! You know you are welcome to all you want, and more too, but—but I thought you did want to—to——”
“To help this too, too solid flesh to melt? Well, so I do,—but Patsy, poppet, your talented cook does make such delectable dainties that I can’t resist. Just a teenty-weenty drop of choclum, there’s a dear, sweet cousin-girl!”
Patty laughed and gave Helen another cup full of the delicious cocoa, and turned her glance aside, as a popover was lavishly buttered.
The morning mail came then, and as Jane brought the girls their letters, Helen took hers, and suddenly gave a deep and hollow groan.
“What’s the matter?” asked Patty, but half-heartedly, as her mail contained a letter from Little Billee, which she was eagerly devouring.
“Matter enough!” wailed Bumble, “that botheration, that pest of my existence, that everlasting nuisance, Chester Wilde, is coming here!”
“Here? When?”
“I dunno. Soon, he says. Today, most likely. I think I’ll telephone him not to come.”
“Why? Why don’t you let him?”
“Oh, he’s such a persistent—er, wooer.”