Ruth hugged Tess and Dot and nodded. It had been a very difficult experience for Ruth Kenway. Secretly she was determined that the smaller children should never be out of her sight again as long as they remained at St. Sergius.
Agnes and Neale were welcomed with much hilarity by the young people of their clique at the St. Sergius Arms, and when they had heard of all the wonderful experiences through which the absentees had passed the two were more popular than ever.
Nalbro Hastings was really quite overpowering in her attentions to Agnes, and the latter was not a little proud that the wealthy Back Bay girl should think so much of her. Agnes had begun to realize, however, that Miss Hastings was really worth while and that she was simple in tastes and kindly of intention.
“I guess I like her because she’s her,” Agnes confessed to Neale. “You said she was a good scout, and she is. But it must just be wonderful after all to be so rich.”
“Wealth won’t keep you from getting your teeth knocked out if you fall from a horse,” chuckled Neale O’Neil. “Sure, she’s a good sport. But she’s nowhere near as pretty as you are, Aggie.”
Tess and Dot might have been inclined to brag a little about their adventures on “Plam” Island, as Dot insisted upon calling it. But they found waiting for them a letter from Sammy Pinkney, and that youthful scribe managed to invest his personal achievements with such a glamor of adventure that even the romance of being cast away on an uninhabited island paled into insignificance.
“Dere Tess and Dot:
“If mom wil let me alon and not mak me tak and lok into the spelin bok evry minit or so Ile try to tel you what has ben goin on here at Milton sins you went down to thos wes innies.
“Yore Belgn hare that you wen off and lef is alright. And Bily Bumps is alright. And Uncle Ruf is alright. And Tom Jonah is alright. And Linda is alright. And Scalawag is alright. And Missus Mack is alright. And Con Murpy’s pig eat his way out of the pen and got in the Willow Wyte sewer and the street depatmen had to come and get him out and Con was mad. So evrybody is well.
“We got a dandy slid on Power Street and Shot Pendlton went through the barb wire fens but I diden and droped off and he was cut up sumpn ferce and got a black eye fightin a feller that said his father stole. But it was another feller done it and Shot’s father went back to work for Kolbeck and Roods.”