“Yes,” said Betty, “they were awfully rushed at the last, you know, but Lucia called me up, just before they were driving to the station, to say another goodbye. I would have gone to the station with her, only under the circumstances it didn’t seem appropriate. You know how it is, and Lucia and I had had our final visit before.”
“Don’t you go and think more of Lucia than you do of us,” reminded Kathryn with, a grin.
“Couldn’t,” laughed Betty, “but Lucia is a fine girl just the same; and she had to have some friends, didn’t she?”
“Yes, more than she wanted of some sorts,” wisely said Carolyn.
“They naturally would have a good deal of attention,” said Betty. “I was the first girl Lucia knew. But Lucia will not forget any of us. The countess is prettier than ever and they are all so perfectly happy to be together again. The count rather wanted to go back before, but Lucia persuaded them to wait till she could finish her work. It was a good thing she didn’t have to stay for the examinations.”
“Do you have any idea, Betty, that she will come back for her senior year?”
“Not in the least,” said Betty, to whom the recent romantic situation at the Murchison home had appealed greatly. “Lucia would like to finish the course here, and I think Countess Coletti would like to have her do it. But Lucia was too excited about going back home to think much about returning. She promised to write and I gave her all the addresses, and dates, I would have this summer.”
Neither Kathryn nor Carolyn would ever ask Betty questions that would pry into Lucia’s secrets, though Betty knew that there had been a great deal of comment over the count’s long absence in travel and the fact that the countess had remained in America with Lucia for so long. Betty herself would never betray Lucia’s worried confidences, and now it was so easy to speak of the happy reunion that she had herself seen and to pass over anything else she might know. Betty had learned by this time not to tell everything she knew to everybody.
But she frankly went on to say that she, too, had a piece of news which she could tell now. “It’s a real happy one, girls. Mr. Murchison has gone East with them and they will go to some place in Connecticut for his wedding! He is marrying somebody that he has known for a long time and they are all going abroad together. That is why Father has to be very busy this summer and has a lot on his hands.”
“My, what a disappointment to several people here!” exclaimed Kathryn. “Oh, I oughtn’t to say that, I suppose.”