“Oh, how kind you are! But I can’t be dressed well enough. This is the best I have.”
“Some wouldn’t think that our middies and bloomers were much in the way of clothes,” laughed Jean. “Please come.”
Molly did not laugh, but she said, “I must talk to you, Greta, and if you can come to us it will be a favor, much easier than for us to come out here, or near by. How soon can you come?”
“The earlier the better for me. I have to get back to work before my mother gets around. I take an early swim and bath in the lake. Then I go back to do the feeding and milking, to get breakfast and start the washing when we have any.”
Molly seemed to know instinctively that Greta could not get permission to come. “While we talk, you can drink a cup of hot cocoa with us and eat a plate of bacon and eggs with toast. Then if you have to hurry back it is all right. Come about five o’clock. We are planning an early hike anyway. And it will be much better if your mother does not know that we were there. Need you notice her tears?”
“I’ve seen her that way before, though not very often, and I never speak of it. I did once,—and I—was sorry.”
“All right. We’ll be looking for you. Nobody but Jean and Nan will know why we want to see you specially.”
Greta promised to come at five o’clock and stay long enough for breakfast. The girls hurried away, though Greta offered to take them across in the boat. “Perhaps I will come by boat to-morrow morning,” she said.
What could Molly have to tell her? Did she mean that her mother talked to her? No, for she said that it would be best for her mother not to know that they had been there. It was a mystery. But that it was important she was sure. Her imagination was busy, but she could not guess what it might be.