“Oh, we haven’t seen him since you did yesterday,” returned Kitty. “But I heard about the flight before he left, and he seemed awfully excited. Just like a kid of sixteen, in love for the first time.”
Linda blushed; so other people had noticed it, too! She wondered if it would be the talk of Green Falls.
“Have you known him long, Kit?” she inquired.
“No. One of Tom’s friends—John Kuhns—met him in a railroad station, just after he had landed from England, and he seemed so sort of lost and lonely that he entertained him. His family liked him so much that they invited him to their summer place, and then suddenly changed their plans and went abroad instead. So John asked Tom to look out for him, and that is how we happen to be entertaining him at Green Falls. I was kind of scared at the idea of royalty, but he seems just like anybody else.”
“I wonder how old he is,” mused Linda, more to herself than to Kitty.
“Too old for you, dear,” replied Kitty. She knew how much Ralph cared for Linda, and she hated to see him suddenly cut out by a foreigner with a title, charming as Lord Dudley was. “You’re not serious about him are you, Linda?”
“Oh, I like him,” replied the other. “I guess all the girls do— By the way, Ralph invited me to your house to lunch to-day. Is that right?”
“Yes indeed, I’m expecting you. And you know it’s the last chance to register for the hunt. You’re entering, aren’t you?”
“I hope to. I’m going to pin Aunt Emily to a definite answer before I come over to-day. I must go in now, Kitty, for I see that Amy is tired of swimming. She’ll want to go home in a minute.”
“Haven’t her parents turned up yet?”