There was great excitement among the girls whose homes were not far away, as they packed their suitcases; often skipping from one room to another to tell some joyous plan they had in store for them. The brother of Dicky Taylor had written of a jolly house party they were to have in their summer home. “Mother is going with us and all of our eight cousins, so you can just bank on a dandy time.”
Then there was a postscript. “Mums said for you to bring along the twins, if you wish, and that will make ten. They’ll keep things lively.”
“Your Buddy.”
Cora and Dora were indeed more pleased with this invitation than Dicky was. “It’s a curious thing,” she confided to Virginia. “Last year I just begged Mumsie to let me bring the Crowell girls home for the spring vacation and she said, ‘Some other time, dear.’ Mums has remembered her promise and now I’d heaps rather have you or some of your crowd. I still like the twins, but their antics don’t amuse me the way they did last year. I seem to have outgrown them, just as one does—well—dolls and toys.”
“I understand, dear,” the older girl said. “But suppose you think of it in a different way. Cora and Dora have had no home-life, I understand, since they were babies and that was too long ago for them to remember. They have been kept summer and winter in Vine Haven Seminary since they were four, and I am sure a fortnight in a real home will give them more happiness than it could any of the rest of us.”
“I know it will,” Dicky agreed brightly, “and I’ll try to think of it that way. Their father-professor never pays them any real attention. When he does come to see them during the Sunday afternoon visiting hour, he always tells them about his scientific discoveries. Dora declares she feels smothered when he is gone.”
Great was the hustle and bustle, as the hour approached for the bus to take the first load of pupils to the station. The five girls whose homes were too far away to be visited for so short a vacation, were on the front porch to wave good-by to those who were departing.
“I say but I’m sorry for you, old dears!” Cora put her head out of a window of the retreating bus to call.
“Don’t cry your eyes out with loneliness for us.” Dora’s merry face appeared beside that of her twin.
“We’ll try to endure the separation,” Betsy Clossen replied. Then as the stage was too far away for further conversation, even though carried on in shouting voices, the six girls on the porch turned and looked at one another.