The girls laughed and Lucile explained, “You see, he’s never happy far from home and dinner.”
“You seemed to get away with a mighty generous supply of oysters yourself the other night,” Phil grumbled good-naturedly.
“Well, if I did, I was only obeying the camp-fire law, ‘Be healthy,’” Lucile defended warmly. 16
The girls laughed and Jessie murmured something about, “That’s right; keep ’em under.”
“What’s that?” Phil demanded, but Jessie evaded with another question:
“When are you going to tell us about Jim?”
“Here we are, half the way home, and you haven’t even begun,” Evelyn added.
“Well, he seems more than satisfied with his engineering, and most of his letter is taken up with praises of Mr. Wescott and his wife and how good they are to him. He says the luck he’s had almost makes him believe in fate.”
“Well, there certainly did seem to be a fate in the way young Mr. Wescott just happened up to camp in the nick of time to find our guardian and fall in love with her, worse luck,” and Lucile vindictively kicked a stone from the path as though it were the meddling Mr. Wescott himself. “And then to think he should like Jim, a poor little country boy, well enough to take him along with him to the city, where he could make something of himself.”
“Well, all I have to say is that there’s no one I’d rather see get along than Jim. I liked him the first minute I saw him, and he sure does improve on acquaintance—the longer you know him, the more you like him. He deserves everything he gets,” and Phil’s face glowed with boyish enthusiasm.