“I’d love ‘rolling in the sand’ with you, Carolyn,” laughed Betty, “but I’ve had a perfectly delicious summer at home. I am, of course, very much offended at you for not having answered my letter; but I’m afraid I can’t keep it up because there’s so much to talk about. Kathryn, can you stay mad at Carolyn?”
“Never could,” smiled Kathryn. “Carolyn gets away with a lot of things she forgets because she is so nice about remembering some more important things.”
“There!” exclaimed Carolyn. “You’re a friend worth having, Kathryn!” And Carolyn wondered at the affectionate glance, full of meaning, that Betty gave Kathryn. It was generous of Kathryn to praise Carolyn, in view of her acknowledged bit of jealousy.
“Betty, I laughed and laughed over that letter. It was too clever for words. And the funny things that happened to you! How do people ever keep house and remember all the things that they have to be careful about? I suppose it’s nothing unusual to have somebody at the back door, a ring at the front door, the ice man coming and all while a body is talking at the telephone and trying to get an important message, but you certainly made it funny. ‘Hello, hello—yes, Father—I don’t quite get that—where did you say to meet you?—mercy, there is the ice man and somebody else is knocking, too and the door-bell is ringing—what’ll I do?—you can’t hold the ’phone?’—something like that, Kathryn. And you must have been scared the time you forgot to keep the screen door fastened and that agent walked right in.”
“Yes,” laughed Betty. “I thought he was taking a gun from his pocket and I backed toward the front room door, ready to run, while he fixed me with his awful eye, and then asked me if I wanted to buy whatever he had. I didn’t even look at it. I gasped out, ‘No, sir,’ and then I heard what I had on the gas stove boiling over and knew it would put out the gas; so I turned and fled, and when I came back the man was gone and nothing was missing!”
“How soon can you girls come out? I’ll be unpacking tomorrow and the house will be upset while things are getting back into shape again, but the day after that—oh, have you heard about Louise Madison, and Ted Dorrance?”
Carolyn’s manner was so impressive as she asked this question that Betty’s heart gave a little leap. What could be the matter! An accident?
“What about them?” asked Kathryn, “married?”
“Not a bit of it. Just the other way. My sister heard all about it. Somebody wrote to her from the same summer resort where the Dorrances and the Madisons happened to be together. Somebody that goes to the University was there, too, and paid a lot of attention to Louise; and she liked it—and him, of course—and you may imagine what Ted thought about it. So all at once Ted left and went somewhere else, with some boys from here, and the girl that wrote to sister claims that Louise is engaged to the other man, though we don’t believe it. Louise is only a freshman in college!”
“You never can tell, Carolyn,” wisely returned Kathryn. “Louise is sort of flirty anyhow. And, for that matter, Ted is pretty nice to all the girls, only since he has been taking Louise around there’s been nobody else.”