“We shall all take to it, I guess, as often as our clothes come to pieces,” declared Babe. “What shall we bring you, Bob?”
“Oh, I don’t know—something queer and out-of-the-way, that I can put on my dear old Harding desk or hang up on the wall above it. I don’t mean a picture, but any queer old thing that you would know came from abroad the minute you set eyes on it from afar.”
“Won’t that be fun to hunt up,” murmured Betty ecstatically, adding Bob’s choice to the others. “Now, Mrs. Brooks, what shall we bring you?”
“Oh, I know what she’d rather have,” cried Babbie, leaning over to whisper something in Betty’s ear and Betty laughed and wrote a few words on her paper. “It’s something that we know you admire,” explained Babbie, “because Mary had one nearly the same and you said you wished you were a bride, so people would give you such things. But perhaps you’d rather choose for yourself.”
But Mrs. Brooks professed herself quite willing to abide by Babbie’s choice. She had already told the girls that her going-away present to them was to be flowers, so “the real business of the meeting,” as Bob had expressed it, was now over; and as everybody was leaving early the next morning, it seemed best to adjourn.
There was nothing dismal about the good-byes next day. Bob was the only one who would be at the steamer to wave the travelers a farewell, but the rest promised to write steamer letters, and as Roberta said, “something will turn up before long to bring us together again. Things happen so fast in the wide, wide world.”
“It doesn’t look as if a September reunion would amount to much,” said K., “with three school-ma’ams and a foreign resident in the crowd.”
“Somebody must get married,” announced Babe. “People can always manage to come to weddings. You’re all going to be married sooner or later, except me and Bob—we’re the man-haters’ union, you know—and you might just as well be accommodating and hurry up about it.”
“You’re going to bring me a duke from abroad,” Eleanor reminded her laughingly. “If you pick out a nice one, I may decide to use him for a husband.”
“Of course we’ll pick out a nice one. Won’t it be fun assisting at the nuptials of a duke, girls? Grander even than the wedding of a Harding professor.”