"Good gracious--" Barbara, dropping her sewing, stared at Keineth in amazement. "I thought--no wonder you're using a dictionary! I am sure I would, too! But--" Keineth broke in hastily. "You see I have been writing a sort of diary, about everything I think and do, to send to my father, but I don't know where he is because he has gone away on a mission for our country and it has to be kept a secret, but I thought--" Her voice broke a little and she held the letter tightly in her hands.
Barbara, feeling how close the tears were to Keineth's bright eyes, crossed quickly to her side.
"Oh, I see!" she said briskly. "What a splendid idea! Of course the President will know where he is and will send it to him. Let me think--we learned all that in school and had to address make-believe letters to him--" Taking a sheet of paper she wrote in large letters:
Honorable Woodrow Wilson,
White House,
Washington, D. C.
"It looks too simple for the President--it ought to have more flourishes to it and titles and things, shouldn't it, Ken? You copy it and we'll walk straight down to the post office and mail it so that it will go on to-night's train." Tears were far from Keineth's eyes as she walked by Barbara's side down the white road between the fields of daisies and buttercups. The little cloud of loneliness that had for a brief time threatened her sky had disappeared and she was again a light-hearted little girl, eagerly awaiting the happy things that each new day at Overlook seemed to bring to her.
CHAPTER V
PILOT COMES TO OVERLOOK
"This is the third time in a week that Billy's been late for dinner," said Mrs. Lee, looking from Billy's empty place at the table to his father's face.
Mr. Lee was serving the steaming chicken and biscuits that Nora had placed on the table.