“And we’ll bring up your breakfast every morning, if you like,” said Babe.
“And we think you are too nice for anything, to say yes without being teased,” declared Bob.
Whereat everybody laughed, thanked Miss Hale, and sped home just in time to escape the dire calamity of being locked out at the mercy of the night-watchman or one’s kind friends within doors.
CHAPTER XII
“THE MERRY HEARTS” CONSPIRE
For the remaining four weeks of the term it is to be feared that “The Merry Hearts” took small advantage of their scholastic opportunities and privileges. There were so many letters to be written home, first for permission to join the Nassau party, and then for summer hats and muslins, to wear on the trip, and so many consultations to be held about the proper kind and amount of clothes to take, the possibility of the Mary-Bird-Club’s needing their glasses for the study of tropical birds, the possibility of transforming a battered gym suit into a natty bathing costume at short notice,—or would flannel suits be altogether too warm for the tropics, and if so, would there be time for a hasty shopping expedition in New York on the day of sailing? It was surprising how many problems presented themselves, besides the essential one of getting the family’s consent for the trip. All the girls who had hoped to go, secured this without any trouble, and Helen Adams, who had only half hoped, was overjoyed to find that her father and mother fully concurred with her in thinking that the trip would be improving enough to warrant her in taking her savings bank money to eke out what they could afford to give her. As for the three who could not go, they were quite as interested in the trip as their more fortunate friends. Rachel speedily became the club’s authority on West Indian geography, and Katherine studied the steamship folders until she could dilate upon the sights of Nassau as fluently as if she had spent months there. Indeed Nita declared that it was really foolish to go to Nassau at all, after having heard K.’s dissertation, because nothing you saw would be new or surprising.
“Trust a Harding crowd to find something new!” retorted Madeline. “With our up-to-date methods of study and research we shall understand Nassau in a week as she has never been understood before.”
“I know you will,” said Nita forlornly. “I’ve always wanted to go there, but now I shan’t want to any more, because you will have so much grander a time than I possibly could, if I went in the ordinary way.”