“I wonder how Amanda is!” Betty Burd had just said, when Adele, who was reading the letter to herself, gave another wild whoop. “Oh! Oh!” she cried, “how I do wish that I was there to see it and hold it and hug it.”
“Della, hold what?” Peggy Pierce inquired. “You are so provokingly mysterious.”
“Girls,” Adele said, “the most beautiful something has happened. Amanda Brown has a baby! A darling, little brown-eyed daughter, and Eva writes that poor Mandy, who so yearned for own folks two years ago, now has a heart brimming over with joy. Pete built an adobe house for her down near Silver Creek, only a stone’s throw from the big ranch house, and since they have plenty of water, the porch is just covered with blossoming vines.
“Oh, how I would love to see that happy little mother sitting there crooning to her baby and watching for her cowboy husband as he rides home in the evening.”
“Girls,” Rosamond exclaimed joyfully, “this summer when we are all at home, let’s each make something for Mandy’s baby. Now, Della, whom is your next letter from?”
Adele glanced over the other letters that the postman-brigade had brought to her. Then she gaily announced, “Here is one from Donald Burnley telling me that he will be glad to come to our party. Two of the others are from Daddy and Mummie with just love and home news in them. Oho! Here is one from Jack. It’s such an unusual thing for my devoted brother to write me a letter all by himself that I am inclined to believe that something interesting must have happened. Perhaps he has passed his college preparatory exams, but that would be almost too much to expect from my indolent brother.”
“Adele, it isn’t a bit nice of you to talk that way about Jack,” Doris Drexel protested. “It doesn’t matter, of course, as far as we Sunnyside girls are concerned, since we grew up with him, but Starr and Carol and the others who don’t know him might think that you meant it.”
Adele laughingly hugged the girl next to her, and then turning to Starr she exclaimed, “Yonder on my dresser is Jack’s photograph and if you care to glance in that direction, you will behold a youth both handsome and indolent, who, nevertheless, is the nicest brother in all the world. There, Doris, is that better?”
“Not much,” the other laughingly replied, “but since Jack is coming to the party, Carol and Starr will soon learn for themselves just how nice he is. Now, do read his letter to us.”
Adele, who had glanced ahead, exclaimed gleefully, “Just as I thought, Jack did have something very unusual to write about or he would merely have added a postscript to Mummie’s letter. It concerns every one of us, so harken and you shall hear: