“But you’re not going to, because you can’t,” Lucile declared, raising a round little arm not yet wholly free from last summer’s tan, for inspection. “Just look at that muscle,” she invited.
“Terrific!” cried Evelyn, in mock terror. “Guess we’d better think twice before we tackle that, Jessie.”
“Mere nothing!” sniffed Jessie, scornfully. “Now, if you want to see real muscle——”
“Oh, yes; we know all about that,” said Lucile, and, throwing an arm about each of the girls, she dragged them over to the settee, saying gaily, “What’s the use of having all this fuss about one old letter, when we have all the really good ones to read?”
The girls exchanged significant glances, but, never-the-less, followed Lucile’s example, opening one letter after another amid a shower of exclamations, comments, questions and quotations from this or that letter, till the other disturbing document was all but forgotten—except by Lucile.
After half an hour of delightful reveling in the news from Burleigh, which seemed so terribly far away, and in tender little messages from mothers and fathers and friends, Lucile looked up from her guardian’s letter, which she had just read for the third time.
“Girls,” she said, seriously, “I’m glad the letters came just as they did this morning. I’ve been thinking——”
“So were we,” broke in Evelyn, “just before you came in——”
“Wonderful!” murmured Jessie. “A red-letter day!”
The girls laughed, but Lucile went on: