“Ida,” I said, “your language is alliterative, but hardly grammatical.”
“Never mind about the grammar,” said Frank, laughing. “You’ve got an idea of some sort in your head, so just let us have it.”
“I have it already,” cried Maggie May, springing towards me with a joy-look in her eyes, and a glad flush on her cheek. “I dreamt it,” she added. “The caravan is already built, and you are going to take us all gipsying when summer comes.”
I am not good at equivocation, so I confessed at once that Maggie May was right, and from the amount of pleasurable excitement the announcement gave her, I augured well. Indeed, we all felt sure that from our romantic trip, Maggie May would return home as well as ever she had been in all her little life.
There is nothing to be compared to the joy of anticipating pleasure to come. And from the very day our beautiful caravan rolled into the yard and was drawn up on the lawn, everybody set about doing what he or she could towards the completion of the fittings, of the already luxuriously furnished saloon of the house upon wheels. (Note 1.)
This was indeed a labour of love. There were so many little things to be thought about, to say nothing of decorations, neat and pretty curtains, a lovely little library of tiny but nicely bound books, mirrors, flower vases, etc.
The cooking department had its head centre in the after-cabin; here, however, no bulky open and dusty stove burned, but a pretty little oil range, and the kitchen fittings and pantry fixings would have compared favourably even with those of Lady Brassey’s yacht, the Sunbeam.
Frank and I, being both old campaigners, saw to everything else.
We had a good coachman, two splendid horses, besides an extra smaller covered cart in which Frank himself, who was to be both valet and cook, could sleep at night.