“The biggest lad of the lot,” said Mrs. Murray, tenderly, as she watched the tall, angular figure start off down towards the sheds. “He’ll enjoy it vastly.”
“It seems too wonderful to be true,” said Isabel, in her fervent way. “Will we be right in the mountains, then, Miss Jean?”
“‘In the heart of the ancient woods,’” quoted Jean, blithely. “Have you ever slept out of doors on a bed of spruce boughs, with nothing around you but the mountains and the sky? Mother says it comes the nearest to feeling the everlasting arms around one of anything in this life that she’s found.”
“You’re rocked in Mother Nature’s cradle, bairnies, then,” smiled Mrs. Murray. “Just like all her younglings of the wilds. And good it is for you, too. I feel the summer’s missed its best reward when we fail to have our little camp outing after the haying.”
“I used to think they never bothered over hay on ranches,” said Ted, suddenly. “I thought they just let all the cattle out to range.”
“So they did in the old range days, when it was free. But we small ranchers have to take care of ourselves a good deal.”
“I don’t understand this,” exclaimed Polly, who had been reading over her last letter from the Admiral. “Grandfather says here that he did think he might get out this way, but business keeps him near Washington all summer, so he is sending the Doctor under safe convoy. What is that, ‘safe convoy’?”
“Special delivery, receipt guaranteed,” spoke up Don, who was making a cage for a couple of ’coons he had caught.
“That letter was mailed a week ago, Polly,” Ruth said. “And you know the Doctor will be here by Wednesday.”
“But under ‘safe convoy,’” repeated Polly. “Grandfather never uses too many words. What does he mean by that ‘convoy.’ A convoy is a ship that conducts another ship, isn’t it?”