“I am pleased. I am very pleased. Gwendolyn has surely dropped her foolishness and I’m proud of her. It’s so much safer for anyone to be normal, without fads or fancies—”
“Oh! come now, you dear Schoolma’am! Never mind the pretty talk just this minute, ’cause I can’t wait to tell you—Father’s coming—my Father is coming and a proper good time with him! If you’ll only remember I wasn’t saucy then—A girl you’d raised to hand, like me, couldn’t really be saucy, could she? And—and please just wait a minute. Please let me talk first. Because I can’t ask everybody, but my darling Father means just as well as Lady Jane. His invite is only for a dozen—round baker’s dozen, to take a trip in his car to Montreal and visit the Ice Palace! Think of that! The beautiful Ice Palace that I’ve never seen in all my life. If you’ll say ‘yes,’ if you’ll be the picker out of ’em, besides yourself and Miss Hexam and Dawkins—Oh! dear! You three grown-ups take off three from my dozen-thirteen! But there’ll be ten left, any way, and please say yes and how many days we may be gone and—Oh! I love you, Miss Muriel, you know I do!”
The lady Principal calmly loosened Winifred’s clasping arms, and smilingly looked into the sparkling, pleading eyes before her. Who could be stern with the whimsical child she had cared for during so many years, and under whose apparently saucy manner, lay a deep love and respect? She did not enlighten the pleader on the fact that this was no new thing she had just heard; nor that there had been written communications passing between Mr. Christie and the Bishop with consent already won. But she put her answer off by saying:
“We’ll see about it, Winifred: and I’m glad there was nobody save Dorothy here to see you so misbehave! But if we go, and if the selection is left to me, I may not please you; for I should choose those whose record for good conduct is highest and whose preparation for exams is most complete.”
Winifred wrinkled her brows. Of course she, as hostess couldn’t be counted either out or in, but she knew without telling that but few of her own class-ten would be allowed to go. They were the jolliest “ten” at Oak Knowe and oftener in disgrace about lessons than free from it.
“Oh! dear! I do wish we’d dreamed this treat was coming! I’d have forced the ‘Aldriches’ to study as hard as they played—if—if I had to do it at the point of my mahl-stick. I guess it’ll be a lesson to them.”
“I trust it will, dear, but Dorothy has waited all this time. Three little maids with three little wishes, regular fairy-tale like, and two of them granted already. What’s yours, Dorothy?”
Since listening to the others’ requests, her own seemed very simple, almost foolish; but she answered promptly:
“I want to get you a boot-boy.”
Winifred laughed.