They saw that a roadster had suddenly stopped, a good-looking lad had leaped out, and, with cap in hand, he was talking pleasantly to the youngest teacher. The little ones gathered close to her and listened with wide eyes. Then, with a merry laugh, the lad tossed the smallest high in the air, shook hands with Gertrude and was gone.
“Adele, I do believe that you are right,” Doris Drexel declared. “I think that maybe it is the tiniest pink bud of a romance.”
“Oh, girls,” Rosamond Wright said, as they returned to the reference table and their books, “wouldn’t this be a fine title for a love story, ‘The poor minister’s daughter weds a millionaire’?”
“‘Rosie the Romancer’ would be an equally good one,” Starr teased, “but, Adele, all of this time your secret has remained unrevealed. Of course we are brilliant enough to realize that it must be about Gertrude. Now, what about her?”
“Something ever so nice!” Adele replied. “The day of our C. E. P. is also Gertrude’s sixteenth birthday. I just happened to remember it; now can’t we have a surprise party for her inside of the big party for all of us, just like those Chinese boxes where there is one inside of the other.”
“Della, what fun that will be!” squealed Betty.
“Let’s do it!” Peggy declared.
“Well then, thumbs up, and all promise absolute secrecy,” Adele said.
“We promise,” came in merry chorus.
“Sh-h! Here comes Gertrude!” some one whispered, and a moment later, when that young lady entered the library, her friends, including Adele, seemed to be engrossed in their studies, and so she went away, little dreaming of the fun that they were planning.