“Then I’ll take lunch on Tuesday,” put in Katherine hastily, “because I am as poor as poverty at present, and a one o’clock luncheon preceded by a breakfast ending at eleven appeals to my lean pocketbook.”
“I should like to take her driving that afternoon,” put in Babbie.
“You may, if you’ll take me to sit in the middle and do the driving,” said Bob, “and let’s all have dinner at Cuyler’s that night—a grand affair, you know, ordered before hand, at a private table with a screen around it, and a big bunch of roses for a centre piece. Old girls like that sort of thing. It makes them feel important.”
“With or without food?” demanded Madeline sarcastically, but no one paid any attention to her, in the excitement of bidding for the remaining divisions of Mary’s week.
All the Chapin House girls and the three B’s met her at the station and “ohed” and “ahed” in a fashion that would have been disconcerting to anybody who was unfamiliar with the easy manners of Harding girls, at the elegance of her new blue velvet suit and the long plumes that curled above her stylishly dressed hair, and at the general air of “worldly and bud-like wisdom,” as Katherine called it, that pervaded her small person.
They had not finished admiring her when her trunk appeared.
“Will you look at that, girls!” cried Katherine, feigning to be quite overpowered by its huge size. “Mary Brooks, whatever do you expect to do with a trousseau like that in this simple little academic village?”
Mary only smiled placidly. “Don’t be silly, K. Some of the spread is in there. Besides, I want to be comfortable while I’m here, and this autumn weather is so uncertain. Who’s going to have first go at carrying the turkey?”
“I’ve got a runabout waiting,” explained Babbie. “I’m going to drive him up. There’ll be room for you too, Mary, and for some of the others.”
The seat of a runabout can be made to hold four, on a pinch, and there is still standing-room for several other adaptable persons. The rest of the party walked, and the little house around the corner was soon the scene of a boisterous reunion.