Priscilla slipped from her mother’s arms.
“Oh, Hannah,” she exclaimed, “would you ask him, would you?”
Hannah laughed: “Well, dearie, I rather think I will,” she said.
And that was the end of Priscilla’s low spirits. For the rest of the afternoon she could hardly contain herself, and had to be warned of the danger of postponing their journey if she did not sleep, before she could be induced to compose herself for bed that night.
It was plain enough, the child had been homesick.
Early that same evening Polly, from her perch on the library window seat, saw a bicycle shoot swiftly around the sweep of the driveway. She was so absorbed in her book that she hardly raised her eyes to look at it and was only dimly aware that the rider wore a uniform of blue, with the cap of a telegraph-messenger upon his head. But Theresa was not, by any means, so blind to what was going on about her. She spied the boy at once and ran down to the kitchen area-way at the back of the house to receive him.
“Oh, botheration!” she ejaculated as she read the message. “If this ain’t the most provoking world! Here I was counting on two more weeks’ vacation at the very least and making plans and everything and now comes a telegram to say the whole thing is up to-morrow.”
“What’s that?” asked the cook, full of curiosity at once.