Betty leaned over and kissed the dimpled hand as she spoke, looking so tender and motherly that the girls forgot to laugh at her. The baby, who had been sitting contentedly on Ruth's lap, received the kiss with favor, and then looking at the girls hovering around her smiled sweetly as if taking them all into her affection at once.
"Isn't she a perfect dear?" cried Dorothy, going down on her knees before her. "I'm with you, Betty; she shall have most of my allowance every week, and I know that we can get lots of help if we are only in earnest about it."
"I'd just love to have the club do it," said Ruth with her usual enthusiasm. "And wherever I am I shall be a member of the club just the same, and always be ready to help out with little Elsa. I know father and Uncle Jerry will be interested in her, too."
"We can all sew for her," suggested Alice, a proposition which caused
Dorothy and Charlotte to look at each other in disgusted silence.
"But where is she going to live?" inquired Katharine, who frequently put a damper on the enthusiasm of her friends by some exceedingly practical question. "We can't plant her out in the square at an equal distance from all of us."
"Oh, dear!" sighed Betty. "I hate to be brought down so suddenly. I'd forgotten that she'd have to have a home. I was just thinking of clothes and education, and I had it all planned that she should be a great singer or a writer, and take care of us in our old age."
Betty's flight of fancy was so absurd that the girls shouted with laughter, and seeing them so merry little Elsa laughed too, and showed her white teeth.
"She's ail right, girls; she can see a joke," said Charlotte, who in spite of herself began to feel the baby's charm.
"Poor little kiddie! I'm sure she's very brave to laugh at the idea of having to support us all," giggled Ruth.
"Let's ask mother about it," suggested Dorothy, as Mrs. Marshall came into the room, and the busy woman, who was never too much occupied to listen to her daughter's plans, or to lend a helping hand, sat down as calmly as though she had nothing else to do. She had already begun to consider the problem of Elsa's future, and she decided immediately that Betty's idea was a good one, and as helpful for the girls as for the baby.