“All present or accounted for,” answered Hippy jovially. “Happy to meet you, ladies,” he greeted, bowing profoundly as he entered the house. “I haven’t been so pleased over anything since I downed my first Boche plane in France. There, there, Nora darling, don’t monopolize the girls. Give your hero husband a chance. I take it that you are to join out with us in our big mid-summer vacation?” questioned Hippy, addressing himself to Emma Dean.
“Are you going to lead the party?” demanded Emma.
“I may have that honor.” Hippy bowed humbly.
“Count me out!” emphasized Emma.
“No, no, no,” protested Anne and Elfreda laughingly.
“Before jumping at conclusions perhaps it would be as well for us to listen to Lieutenant Wingate’s plan,” suggested Grace, rising. “Dinner is being served. Come! We can talk while we eat,” she added, leading the way to the dining room whose windows overlooked the sloping green lawns of Grace Harlowe’s much-loved home.
Elfreda, Anne and Emma had, within the hour, arrived at Haven Home where Grace had been living quietly and restfully since her return from France, in which country she and her friends of the Overton Unit had been serving with the Red Cross during the closing year of the war.
Grace’s husband, Captain Tom Gray, was still in Russia where he had been sent from France on a military mission, and Yvonne, her adopted daughter, was a pupil in a private school in New England, so she felt free to invite the girls of her Unit to join with her in a summer’s outing that would offer both recreation and adventure.
Anne Nesbit, Elfreda Briggs and Emma Dean were the only members of the Unit who had not already made their plans for the summer.
While Grace would have been pleased to have all the girls of the Overton Unit join in her proposed outing, she was just as well pleased that her invitation had not been more generally accepted. The present party was of about the right size, as she reasoned it. Then again, the members of the party had been close associates for many years; they had shared their girlhood joys and sorrows; they had suffered together in those desperate days in France when it seemed to them that the very universe were rending itself asunder, and from all this had been born a better understanding of each other and a greater love and respect.