“No; that is, not exactly. Still, she wasn’t very well pleased,” admitted Marjorie. “I hope someone finds the letter yet and brings it to me. But where are the rest of the girls?” She decided that a change of subject was in order. Lucy’s too-evident umbrage had hurt her considerably. She therefore preferred to try to forget it for a time at least.
“They’ve gone on ahead,” informed Constance. “Muriel had an errand to do in town and so had Susan. Irma and Harriet went with them. They are to meet us at Sargent’s at four-thirty.”
“Then we had better be starting for there.” Marjorie consulted her wrist watch. “It’s ten after four now. Let’s hurry along. Did either of you have a chance to talk with Veronica after school?” she continued as they set off for Sargent’s three abreast.
“I saw her for a moment in the locker room,” replied Constance. “She seemed to be in quite a hurry. She smiled at me but didn’t say anything. Then she put on her hat and left the locker room without stopping to talk to any of us.”
“I suppose she has to go straight home from school and help Miss Archer’s sister,” surmised Jerry. “I’d hate to have to study all day and then go home and shell peas or scrub floors or answer the doorbell or do whatever had to be done. I guess we ought to be thankful that we don’t have to earn our board and keep.”
“I ought to be doubly thankful,” agreed Constance seriously. “Not so very far back in my life I had no time to play, either. Every once in a while when I feel specially self-satisfied, I take a walk past the little gray house where I used to live before my aunt played fairy god-mother to all of us. It makes me remember that my good fortune was just a lucky accident and takes all the conceit out of me.”
“Now that we are seniors I believe we ought to make it our business to do all we can for the girls in school who aren’t able to have the good times we do,” stated Marjorie soberly. “It seems to me that we might band ourselves together into some sort of welfare club. If we do well with it we can pass it on to the next senior class when we have been graduated from Sanford High.”
“Hurrah!” Jerry waved a plump hand on high. “That’s the talk. Every since last year I’ve had that club idea on my mind. Let’s hurry up and organize it at once. For that matter we can do it this afternoon; the minute we meet the girls at Sargent’s. There will be seven of us to start with. Then we can decide on how many more girls we’d like to have in it.”
“Oh, splendid!” exclaimed Marjorie, the sober expression vanishing from her pretty face. “Once we organize a club and get it well started, who knows what distinguished members we may become.”
As the three girls swung blithely along toward Sargent’s the incessant flow of conversation that went on among them betokened their signal interest and enthusiasm in the new project.