"Well, we can't. What has got into you, Dollyrinda? I believe you're homesick!"
"I am, Dotty! I'd give anything to see mother now.—I wish I was home in my own room."
"You'll be there soon enough. I s'pose we'll go Wednesday."
"Wednesday! that seems ages off!"
"Why, Dollums, to-morrow, you can say Wednesday is day after to-morrow! That's what I always do if I want to hurry up the days. But I don't want to hurry up our days in New York! No sir-ee! I love every one of 'em! I wish we could stay a month!"
"I don't!" and then there were few more words said between the two that night. Soon they were in bed, and if Dolly lay awake, Dotty didn't know it, for she fell asleep almost as soon as her dark curly head touched its pillow.
Meantime in the next room, the other two were talking.
"I do hope Uncle Jeff will find his old jewel," Bernice said, pettishly. "We won't have a bit more fun, if he doesn't." "That's so," agreed Alicia, "but he won't find it."
"How do you know?"
"Oh, 'cause. It's very likely fallen down some crack or somewhere that nobody'd think of looking. Why, once, a photograph was on our mantel, and it disappeared most mysteriously. And we never could find it. And after years, there was a new mantelpiece put in, and there was the picture! It had slipped down a narrow mite of a crack between the mantel-shelf and the wall back of it."