“Oh, Uncle George!” Betty cried, scarcely able to believe what she had heard. “Really, truly, are you going to send me? Won’t it take a lot of money? Mother says that we cost you ever so much as it is.”
Taking both of her small hands in his, the young man replied earnestly, “Pet, your father was my older brother and he went without many things that he might send me away to college, and now that I am a prosperous editor, do you suppose that for one minute I am going to neglect the education of his only little girl, and my only little girl, too? Indeed I am not, and from now on I want you to think of me as though I were your own daddy. I will give you an allowance, but, if you need more money, promise me that you will write and ask for it.”
“Dear Uncle George,” Betty said as she looked up with a joyous light shining through the tears that would come, “how can I thank you?” Then, impulsively she threw her arms about his neck and gave him a bear hug.
The other girls were glad to hear that their youngest member could go, if they did, but as yet they had not received a letter from the matron of Linden Hall.
The following afternoon the seven girls met at Adele’s to review some of their studies. Of course it had been the practical Bertha’s suggestion.
“We don’t want to get behind,” she told them, “even if we are going to a boarding-school.”
“Girls,” Rosamond Wright declared, “I have my trunk almost packed and I’ll be ready to take the train the moment that Madame Deriby writes, ‘Come.’”
“But what if she writes, ‘Don’t come’?” Peggy Pierce inquired mischievously.
“Then I’ll unpack it again,” Rosamond declared quite undisturbed by the teasing, “but there isn’t much danger of the matron’s telling us not to come,” she added. “Why, we six girls will be a small fortune to her and she will take us even if she has to build an addition to the school.”
“Hurray! Here comes the postman,” Betty Burd exclaimed joyously. “Adele, what if he has the fatal letter?”