“Mamma wants the Club to meet at our house sometime soon,” Alice said in farewell, as she and Ben trotted off together.
Ben waved his scrap of a blue cap as he cried: “Good-bye, good-bye, Black Lace Lady! Good-bye, Glad Girl! Good-bye, Elsa!”
“Have you thought of a name for Elsa yet?” called out Betty, waving the now empty lunch-bag over her head frantically.
“That’s telling!” Ben answered teasingly. He had thought, but he was going to keep it to himself for awhile.
Miss Ruth, Betty, and Elsa, had not gone far on their homeward way when Mrs. Danforth overtook them, in a closed coupé with a driver in livery, who stopped the gray horse beside the group in the road. Mrs. Danforth had very often, lately, driven out on Berkeley Avenue, and several times in passing the Holts’ house she had seen a stooping-shouldered man, whom she supposed to be Mr. Holt, going to or coming from the long shed, the place where, probably, she thought, the market garden supplies were kept. The garden window frames showed just behind the house.
“Where are the others of your Club?” she asked, as she let down the coupé window. She had expected to meet all of the Club together.
“O, we came back through the woods, grandmother,” explained Elsa; “you must have met Ben and Alice just now.”
Then Mrs. Danforth remembered that she had met a boy and a girl only a short distance back, but she had not noticed them especially.
“I can take one of you home with me,” she said, looking from Miss Ruth to Elsa and then to Betty, and pulling her handsome sable furs closer up around her neck as the cool air came into the coupé.
“Thank you, Mrs. Danforth, but I enjoy walking,” replied Ruth Warren, who was entirely willing to give up the drive to one of the children.