Mrs. Burnside came out to greet the party, and Sally tumbled into her welcoming arms, hugging her frantically, and pulling away from her again to look about her. She seemed a different girl from the limp and languid one who had climbed into the carriage an hour before.
"Isn't it absolutely enchanting?" she exclaimed, gazing eagerly into the big tent, the open flaps of which showed an outer room arranged with rugs, chairs, couch, and table. Other open flaps at the corners of this outer enclosure invited exploration, and Sally promptly obeyed the summons. She found four smaller rooms, securely partitioned by high, tightly stretched canvas walls. She came back beaming.
"What does it all mean?" she begged. "Are we to stay here to-night? Was there ever anything so inviting as those beds and cots? I could hardly keep from falling into one of them."
"You may fall into one as soon as you choose," said Josephine, gleefully. "The one on the southeast corner is yours, the one with the blue Japanese rug on the floor and the wicker chair with the blue cushion. We've sent a telephone message to the rest of your family, so they won't expect you back."
Jarvis, returning with Max from the bestowal of his horses in the barn, found his mother and the two girls sitting in a row upon a rustic seat at a little distance from the tent, their faces toward the camp fire, now a mere flicker, which nobody had taken the trouble to revive. It was too hot a night for camp fires, except as welcoming beacons.
"Well?" questioned Jarvis, standing before the three, upon whom the bright midsummer moonlight streamed so luminously that the white figures were visible in every detail.
"Well?" responded Josephine.
"Very well, I think," added Mrs. Burnside.
"More than well!" And Sally clasped her hands in a way both characteristic and eloquent. "A dozen tonics couldn't have made me feel so much stronger as the notion of sleeping in that big white tent. I wish I knew just what the thermometer says it is in the flat at home. Oh, poor Uncle Timmy, and Bob and Alec! How I wish they were here—don't you, Max?"
It would have taken a harder heart than that which beat wearily in Max's breast to allow him to answer his sister sullenly.