"Running away?" she repeated wonderingly. "Why, Teddy, sometimes I almost think you're foolish."
"That's what Mother says, only she's sure of it," said Teddy, with a wry little grimace that made Billie laugh.
"Well, she ought to know better than I," she said demurely. "She's known you longer."
"Not very much," Teddy retorted, opening the gate of the little picket fence for her. "And, anyway, you haven't answered my question. What did you run away for?"
"I didn't run away. I escaped," she explained, making a face at the memory of the crowd. "I wonder what makes people so curious. I do believe all a person would have to do to collect a crowd would be to stand on a soap box and say, 'Isn't this beautiful weather?'"
"You bet. Especially if that person were you," said Teddy, and Billie looked at him reproachfully.
As the two entered the hall they met the girls just coming down stairs.
They all went to the kitchen, where they found Mrs. Jenkins just finishing a batch of golden brown crullers. She greeted the girls with a beaming smile and insisted that Laura and Violet sit down while she got them some breakfast.
"Why, you must be nearly starved," she said.
The girls protested that they were making her too much trouble, but she gave them a cruller—"to stop their mouths," she said—and then set cheerily to work to fry some more bacon and eggs, putting in a word now and then and listening with a smile to the girls' merry chatter.