“Oh, the college’ll be all right. Guardy wouldn’t have suggested it if it wasn’t. But we’ll go up there this morning and look around.”
“Now, children, don’t get your heart set on it before you know all about it. You know that house may be quite impossible.”
“Now, Cloudy!” put in Leslie. “You know Allison told you you were a good sport. You mustn’t begin by 116 preaching before you find out. If it isn’t all right, why, of course we don’t want it; so let’s have the fun of thinking it is till we prove it isn’t––or it is.”
Julia Cloud looked into the laughing, happy eyes, and yielded with a smile.
“Of course,” she said, “that’s reasonable. I’m agreed to that. But there’s one thing: you know we’re bound to go on to the other college, because Mr. Luddington expects us; and we can come back here again if we like this better.”
“Oh, we can wire him to come here,” said Leslie. “Now, let’s go! First to that house, please, because I’m so afraid somebody will buy it before we get the option on it. I’ve heard that houses are very scarce in the East just now, and people are snapping them up. I read that on the back of that old man’s paper at the next table to ours this morning.”
All three of them having the hearts of children, they went at once to hunt up the agent before ever they got even a glimpse of the halls of learning standing brave and fair on the hillside in the morning sunshine. “Because there are plenty more colleges,” said Leslie; “but there is only one home for us, and I believe we’ve found it, if it looks half as pretty in the daylight as it did at night.”
It took only a few minutes to find the agent and get the key of the house, and presently they were standing on the terrace gazing with delight at the house.
It was indeed a lovely little dwelling. It was built of stone, and then painted white, but the roof and gables were tiled with great pink tiles, giving an odd little foreign look to it, something like Anne Hathaway’s cottage in general contour, Leslie declared.