The new year came in with an old-fashioned snowstorm and Agnes and Ruth began to cough again. Mr. Howbridge looked grave, but Dr. Forsyth prophesied that the coughs would wear off as soon as the afflicted girls got into the belt of steady, warm weather.
On the third of January they started. Mrs. MacCall was red-eyed and Linda was really not fit to be seen! Old Uncle Rufus was as mournful as could be, but tried to show some cheerfulness.
Sammy, having observed certain weddings in the neighborhood, tied a number of old shoes on the back of the automobile for luck and was restrained with difficulty from throwing rice all over the Corner House girls as they left home.
Mr. Howbridge had taken Luke Shepard’s advice, and had booked passage on the steamship Horridole from the port of Boston. Luke met them with Professor Keeps and his outfit at the dock. It was a gay party indeed that went aboard and sought their reservations among the best staterooms on the boat.
“Dear me!” sighed Agnes ecstatically, and now quite her pleasure-loving self, “it is so nice to be wealthy. If we should ever be poor again, Ruth, I know I should be the hatefulest thing in skirts.”
“Why, Aggie! Don’t talk that way.”
“It is the truth,” said the flyaway sister. “Nothing poor or mean can ever satisfy me again. I sometimes think I shall have to marry a millionaire, or else I shall make my husband very miserable.”
“You won’t have to worry about that yet,” laughed Ruth, but she flushed very prettily and looked at Luke, who was out of earshot.
CHAPTER VIII—LOTS OF FUN
There was one matter which had troubled Ruth, and her friends, as well, before they left Milton and the old Corner House. Even her illness could not entirely turn Ruth’s mind from the sad case of the Pendletons.