“Hush, be very quiet, dear, or we shall wake your grandmother,” she said, dropping the furry bundle on the top step of the Danforth veranda and kissing the warm, sleepy face. “Lock the door safely, and go straight to bed and to sleep.”
But Elsa stopped long enough to whisper into Miss Ruth’s ear: “Thank you ever and ever so much.”
Almost as soon as Elsa had put down the latch, left the fur cape in the hall and crept up-stairs to bed, she saw a light in Miss Ruth’s room and one window shade raised just a little. Even while her eyes were fixed upon the shadow of a rose against the curtain, she fell fast asleep and dreamed that her Uncle Ned came in the shape of a great gray owl, and rescued her out of a white-walled dungeon.
CHAPTER III
WHAT THE WOODS GAVE
The world is so full of a number of things,
I am sure we should all be as happy as kings.
—Robert Louis Stevenson.
“I WISH we could walk out to the Convalescent Home this afternoon,” were Betty’s first words when the three girls reached Miss Ruth’s house the next Friday, all very much out of breath from their haste. “I am tired, school has been so dull and stupid,” said Betty, “and my head aches. Please can we go?” Betty, from at first not wanting to go to the Convalescent Home, now wanted very much to go, for, since then, Alice had been telling her more about it.
“Would you like to take the walk this afternoon, Elsa?” Miss Ruth inquired. “Is your grandmother willing for you to go?”