“I’m in that class,” Ted put in, blithely. “Let’s all be jolly good travelers, girls, and start in ‘roughing it’ from this end. Why, we’d have a good time even if we went on a plank through the air.”
“I don’t quite approve of that picture, Ted,” laughed Miss Murray. “I think we’ll go by the regular route. How does it seem to you, girls, to be counting the pennies and dollars?”
“Good discipline,” Polly said, nodding her head emphatically.
It surely was. Even the Admiral, who had rather regarded the western trip as one of Polly’s air castles, was forced to admit that she was a good general. By the time school closed in June, there was $336.00 in the treasury, and the girls had earned it all, practically, themselves. What they had not earned, they had acquired through self-denial, giving up pretty summer gowns, and hats, and “accessories,” as Isabel said, rather mournfully—“specially those ‘accessories.’”
“But Polly, you’re giving us only these rough, straw outing sailors, and the little caps,” Sue protested. “What shall we wear to church?”
Jean smiled at them over the top of her book. They were in the garden at the Hall during noontime.
“The nearest church to us is thirty-five miles,” she told them. “If we are very fortunate, we may have service once in a while from the missionary bishop, or some of his priests, but usually father reads it Sunday mornings for us all, and we like to hold it out of doors. You won’t miss your hats, girls.”
“How you must love your father, Miss Murray,” Polly said later, when they were alone. “I always hear you speak of him as though you—oh, I don’t know,—as though you believed he always did the right thing. He must be very nice.”
“He is splendid,” said Jean, simply. “At least we think so. And so is mother. But you girls will love Captain Sandy, Miss Diantha’s husband.”
“Why?” asked Polly.