“To-day’s the third, isn’t it?” observed Babe carelessly the next morning at breakfast. “I believe I’ll stay at home and write some letters.”
Babbie, who was sitting by the window, happened to glance out at the street just then. “You needn’t,” she announced calmly. “He’s arriving this very minute in a hansom.”
“Who is arriving, Babbie?” asked Mrs. Hildreth. Whereupon Babbie assured her that she was utterly disqualified as a competent chaperon; she ought to have grasped the connection between John Morton and Babe’s mad desire to write letters without any help at all.
John was in high spirits. “Hope you’ve noticed that I’m exactly on time,” he told Babe in a confidential aside. “Old Dwight nearly passed away with surprise when he saw me settling down to a good steady grind. It’s queer how people always think that if a fellow doesn’t work it’s because he hasn’t brains enough. Old Dwight said he actually envied me my clear and logical mind. I told him to tell that to dad, and he did—wrote a corking letter all about me and my industry and my marvelous progress. I can’t wait to get dad’s answer.”
“He’ll be sure to be awfully pleased,” said Babe sympathetically. “I’m pleased too. If you hadn’t finished in time I should have given you back your pin. I wouldn’t take a pin from a shirk.”
“Are you going to escort us out to see the sights of London, John?” asked Babbie.
“Of course. That’s why I came around so early, before you’d had a chance to get started off without me on a picnic or a ghost-hunt or any other interesting festivity. What shall we do first?”
“Oh, let’s have a ghost-hunt!” cried Babbie eagerly. “We haven’t paid the least speck of attention to ghosts since we left Oban. I can’t have my dominant interest so neglected.”
“All right,” agreed John. “Only it isn’t moonlight, and we should probably be ‘taken in charge,’ as the police say over here, if we made a sheeted ghost walk in London.”
“Then how are we going to have a ghost-party?” asked Betty. “Madeline, think up a way.”