But—“Here, Babbie,” Babe called after her, “you’re forgetting to take care of your property. Ghosts are your dominant interest, and John is a ghost. Therefore you ought to look after him, Q. E. D.”
“Don’t you want to change interests with me?” asked Babbie demurely. “You’ve been going to get a new one all summer in place of your inaccessible chimney-pots.”
“Thank you,” said Babe coolly, “but I don’t want a second-hand interest. If I change, it will be for something that nobody else has tried. Come on, Madeline.”
John accepted Babe’s prompt solution of their difficulties, and in the rôle of “Babbie’s tame Parisian ghost”—it was Madeline’s name, of course—coöperated with Babe and Betty to avoid embarrassing tête-à-têtes. Madeline and Babbie on the other hand, objected strenuously to Betty’s enrolling herself in Babe’s faction.
“I suppose she’s told you all about it,” Babbie said dolefully, “and made you promise to help her. She won’t tell me a thing, but I can see for myself that in spite of her trying to appear so gay and lively, she’s worried and nervous and growing thin. Just because you discovered that match-making won’t work you needn’t try the other thing.”
“I’m only keeping her good natured,” explained Betty laughingly. “She told me a little, but she left out all the important points, just as people in love always do. She doesn’t know what she wants, and John doesn’t. Something will turn up before long, I hope, to help them decide.”
“Of course it will,” agreed Madeline easily, “and meanwhile all Paris is before us. Where shall we go to-day?”
“Let’s leave it to the man from Cook’s,” suggested Betty.
“Victor Hugo’s house, then,” announced Madeline promptly. “John particularly wants to go there.”
But John had promised to meet a college friend that afternoon, and Mr. Dwight was busy, so the four girls and Mrs. Hildreth went off alone. When they got back John was in the garden with a formidable collection of railway guides and Baedekers piled on a green table before him.