"Hm-m; very fine, I'm sure," murmured Miss Sophronia, a little shortly. "And now she's asked these girls home with her—the whole lot of them!"
"Yes; and they're crazy over it—as you'd know they would be."
Miss Sophronia sniffed audibly.
"Humph! It's the parents that are crazy, I'm thinking," she corrected. "Imagine it—six scatter-brained children, and all the way to Texas! Mary!"
"Oh, but the father is in the East here, on business and he goes back with them," conciliated Mrs. Wilson, hastily. "Besides, Mrs. Kennedy is going, too."
Miss Sophronia raised her eyebrows.
"Well, I can't say I envy her the thing she's undertaken. Imagine my attempting to chaperon six crazy girls all the way from New Hampshire to Texas—and then on a ranch for nobody knows how long after that!"
"I can't imagine—your doing it, Sophronia," rejoined the minister's wife, demurely. And at the meaning emphasis and the twinkle in her eye, Miss Sophronia sniffed again audibly.
"When do they go?" she asked in her stiffest manner.
"The first day of July."