“Oho!” laughed Betty Burd. “Eva, you’re a poet and don’t know it.”
“Come now,” said Adele, who was Mistress of Ceremonies, “we must start on our journey. Eva, you are to sit in state with the driver, and all the rest of us are to scramble up on the hay, because we are not so important to-day.”
“More rhymes,” laughed Peggy Pierce.
Into the daisy-covered hay-rack the girls climbed, looking as pretty as the flowers themselves. Then Bob started the horses, Jerry and Jingo, and somehow they seemed to know that the spirit of fun was abroad, for they galloped down the road at a merry pace and the girls laughed and sang. Soon they turned into the meadow-lane. “What a darling log cabin!” Eva exclaimed, as they neared the Secret Sanctum.
“Just wait until you see the inside of it,” said Adele. Then the horses stopped and out of the hay-rack the girls leaped, not waiting for Bob’s proffered assistance. Adele threw open the cabin-door and the guests entered with exclamations of pleasure.
Bertha hung back for a few last words with her brother Bob, after which he drove the equipage over near the wood, unhitched, and turned the horses out to graze. Then he took a short cut to the town.
Soon the merry fun began. There were whirling and singing and dancing games, and after an hour of rollicking, Adele invited the guests to take a walk with her in the maple wood, so away they went, little dreaming of the delightful surprise that would await them when they returned to the cabin.
When the last gleam of white had disappeared among the trees, all was hustle and bustle in Buttercup Meadows.
“Quick now!” exclaimed Bertha Angel, who was Mistress of Ceremonies in Adele’s absence. “We must hurry if we are to have everything ready in fifteen minutes, and Adele never can keep the orphans in the woods longer than that.”
“The boys ought to be here this very second, if they are going to help us,” said Betty Burd.