"I hardly think so. You see it is only two weeks off and the Little Mother has not said anything about it, has she, Polly?"
"No, in her last letter she said she thought she'd come down to Washington for Easter week and stop at the Willard, but it is not settled yet. I'd rather be in Annapolis at Easter and go for some of our long rides. Wasn't it fun to have Shashai and Silver Star back there during our visit! I believe they and Tzaritza and Jess had the very time of their young—and old—lives. And wasn't Tzaritza regal with Rhody?"
"It was the funniest thing I've ever seen," laughed Stella. "That dog acted exactly like a royal princess entertaining a happy-go-lucky jackie. Rhody's life on board the Rhode Island since you and Ralph rescued him seems to have been one gay and festive experience for a Boston bull pup."
"It surely has," concurred Polly. "Snap says he's just wise to everything, and did you ever see anything so absurd as those clown tricks the jackies taught him?"
"I think you are all perfectly wonderful people, dogs and horses included," was Rosalie's climax of eulogy, if rather peculiar and comprehensive.
"Well, we had one royal good time and we are not likely to forget it either. Peggy, weren't you petrified when you struck 'eight bells' at the hop, for the death of the old year? Goodness, when those lights began to go out, and everybody stopped dancing I felt so queer. And when 'taps' sounded little shivery creeps went all up and down my spine, and you struck eight bells so beautifully! But reveille drove me almost crazy. When the lights flashed on again I didn't know whether I wanted to laugh or cry I was so nervous," was Natalie's reminiscence.
"It was the most solemn thing I ever heard and the most beautiful," said Marjorie softly. "It made me homesick, and yet home doesn't mean anything to me; this is the only one I have known since I was eight years old."
"Eight years in one place and a school at that!" cried Juno. "Why, I should have done something desperate long before four had passed. Girls, think of being in a school eight years." Juno's tone implied the horrors of the Bastile.
"If you had no other, what could you do?" Marjorie's question was asked with a smile which was sadder than tears could have been.
Juno shrugged her shoulders, but Polly slipped over to Marjorie's side and with one of Polly's irresistible little mannerisms, laid her arm across her shoulder, as hundreds of times the boys in Bancroft demonstrate their good fellowship for each other. Another girl would probably have kissed her. Polly was not given to kisses. Then she asked: