“Oh, thank you, boys!” Adele cried with glowing eyes. “We will think of you every time that we eat one of these delicious candies.”
“You won’t think of us for long then,” Bob teased, “not if you all eat candy as fast as Rosie does.”
“Here comes the train that is to carry our fair ones away!” Jack shouted. Then, what a scurrying there was. The boys seized satchels and suit-cases and the girls threw their arms around their mothers and fathers for a last embrace, in the excitement of the moment not realizing how much they were going to miss them later. Then the boys escorted them into the train, found their seats, piled their luggage in the racks overhead, and Bob teasingly told them to be sure to get off when they reached their destination. The train started, and the boys made a wild rush for the door and swung to the platform just in time to keep from being borne away.
Adele looked out of the window at her mother, who stood with her arm about Gertrude’s waist. The tears rushed to her eyes. It was hard to leave these two who were so dear to her, but it would not be long before the Christmas holidays, and then they would all be together again.
Blinking back the tears, she turned with her bright smile toward the merry girls who were chatting and laughing all together.
“I do hope we are going to have some interesting adventures at Linden Hall,” Rosamond was saying.
They were to have many adventures and the first one began the very next day.
CHAPTER EIGHT
APPLE-BLOSSOM ALLEY
That Saturday afternoon Carol Lorens and Evelyn Dartmoor were sauntering arm in arm through the garden paths on the south side of the Linden Hall boarding-school, little dreaming of the delightful something which was just about to happen.
Soon a small girl appeared running toward them, calling, “Carol Lorens, here is a letter for you. Madame Deriby asked me to give it to you at once because there is something interesting in it.”