“I expect to be at school till four or five o’clock practicing something or other most days, Mother,” she informed Mrs. Lee. “So don’t worry. If I do get home it’s so much gained. I imagine it’s a good thing Chet’s in the university now. There won’t be anybody to dawdle around with between times.”
Mrs. Lee did not look much impressed with this statement, for it was quite likely that there would be some one yet to take an interest in Betty Lee. “Most of your hikes and picnics will be on Saturday, I suppose,” she suggested and Betty assented.
“We girls, the ‘Happy Hoodlums,’ or something like that,” she said, “are having a hike right away, and the G. A. A. is to have a big picnic again very soon.”
While the G. A. A. election was still to take place and discussions and suggestions and urgent appeals for candidates were rife, the almost greater excitement of the exodus and “in-o-dus,” a word of Dick’s coining, occurred. They all thought it “terrible” that it had to happen in school time, but Mrs. Lee, good manager that she was, told them not to get upset about it. She gave them cartons, in which they could pack the odds and ends and various treasures, and told them to be sure that they had the books they wanted in their lockers at school. “Now goodbye, kiddies mine,” she said on Friday morning. “When you come home this afternoon—come to the new address!”
“Gee, Mom—I bet I forget,” said Dick.
“It was wonderful,” Betty told the girls on the hiking club expedition Saturday afternoon. “We did walk on almost bare floors for several days, because Mother sent the big rugs to the cleaners; but there, we left everything almost as usual, and after a while regular spiffy movers came, and when we went after school to the new place, there were the big rugs all down and all our furniture and things in place and Mother, with a woman to help, arranging the ‘pots and pans!’ It was all newly decorated anyhow, and Mother had had a man and a woman get the new place ready first before the move. Then Father left the car for her and a lot of the best china and ornaments and things went over that way, though they could have gone by truck, of course.
“I’ve worked all morning, getting my books in my own little book-case in my new room, and unpacking my trunk, and hanging my clothes in my own big closet. Oh, I’m crazy about it, and Mother says I may have the first party. You are all invited. I’ll have it after the G. A. A. picnic.”
Lucia, swinging the same alpenstock which had so interested Mathilde in times past, was an interested listener. “Betty,” she said, “you can make the most uninteresting things sound funny! Now I should think moving would be the last thing on earth!”
“Oh, but it is such fun to fix things,” cried Betty. “Mother and Father had the responsibility, of course, but Mother had plenty of help, so it could get done quickly, and I think she is just as excited as I am over it all. You see, Lucia, we may buy this place and have it for our very own.”
“Well, that is different, I suppose,” said Lucia, thinking of the old palaszo in Milan, that had belonged to the Coletti’s for ages. But here in America they moved as casually as anything, first to this apartment, then to that, or some of their friends did!