Miss Ruth unfastened the waist-band buttons, the skirt dropped to the floor, and Ben stood there in the middle of the room, looking even funnier than ever in his dark blue knickerbockers and the brown blouse waist. Miss Ruth mercifully and quickly helped him into the old blue reefer jacket, which was so tight now that he could not button it at all.
“I should be glad to have you come back to the Club meeting, after you have taken the squirrel home, Ben,” Miss Ruth said, with the double purpose of making sure that the squirrel reached his headquarters and of giving Ben a share in the meeting if he really wanted to come back. “Will you ask Alice if she would like some of the paper dolls to paint, and if she would, you could take them to her,” she added.
“Yes, I will come back,” Ben answered, with a brightening face. “I’d like to—anyway—and Peggy would be disappointed not to know all about the meeting.”
“I am going to tell the Club a story I promised them. It is only about a little old lady’s doll; but if you would like to hear it, I will wait till you come.”
“Yes, ma’am, I should like to hear it, thank you,” replied Ben most humbly.
“Alice said you like dolls, Ben,” cried Betty mischievously.
“I don’t care,—I do like dolls sometimes. I ducked a boy into the frog-pond once—” began Ben; but he stopped and burst out laughing, for Miss Ruth had given him a queer look, and now she was saying: “It seems to me we have heard about that before, Ben.”
“Hurry, Ben,” exclaimed Elsa, impatient for the story. “Hurry home and hurry back again.”
“Perhaps I can find our hired man on the road with Jerry,” called out Ben, as he left the room, “and then I’d go flying home and back quicker than a flash.”
“Or a squirrel,” added Miss Ruth. “Be careful of the squirrel, Ben.”