“What, Virg! You wouldn’t pack up and go to a hospital, would you?” Margaret looked alarmed.
“No, but I might pack up and go to the desert. Not to stay, but just to peep in and see what brother and Uncle Tex are doing. They’re sitting in front of the fireplace now, I suppose, and Rusty Pete, perhaps, is there talking over the work for tomorrow.”
“And my brother, Peyton, may have ridden over to V. M. to spend the night,” Babs said. “He wrote me that he often does that, when he has business to attend to in Douglas. It would be too far to make the round trip in one day, and so he stops with Malcolm.”
While the girls were talking there came a timid knock.
“Come in,” was Virginia’s hospitable invitation. The door opened and Dicky Taylor stood on the threshold.
“Hello there, Dicky bird. What’s the big idea? Why not walk in?” This from Betsy.
“I wasn’t sure you wanted me.” The girl entered and closed the door. “You see, I don’t belong to your little club-group, and I don’t want to intrude, but ever since I went over to the Burgess place with Micky I’ve had such an interest in that nice girl and I hoped you would tell me what happened next.”
There was a little wistful expression in the eyes of the pretty young girl and Virginia hastened to say: “We haven’t a club, really, Dicky. I mean not one that shuts anyone out who wants to come in. I’m not at all sure but that we might have asked you to meet with us Saturday evenings for our lesson reviews, that being our main object, only we thought that you belonged to the Cora-Dora Troupe and that its activities and your lemonade teas took all of your free time.”
“It’s a curious thing.” Dicky had seated herself at Virg’s invitation, and she spoke with unwonted seriousness. “I can’t understand it myself. Last year I was perfectly contented with the nonsense and pranks that the twins are always thinking up, but this year I feel—well, I don’t know as I can express it. I’ll say sort of dissatisfied, as though I were mentally hungry. Oh, I don’t know exactly what I do mean, but I feel it. A restlessness that the Cora-Dora Troupe and the teas do not seem to satisfy. And it just came to me recently that the something I want, you girls have. Even Babs is lots different this year. She seems to have a definite aim.”
Virginia looked up brightly. “That’s it, dear! That is the whole secret of content, I do believe. Having a definite aim and every day making some progress, however little, toward it.” Then with a glance about at all of them: “You want to know just what happened to change Winona’s plans, so I will tell you.”