For the remainder of the day the girls were absorbed in something which took them to their room and kept them there, and they only appeared when dinner was announced, and the family already seated at the table.
"Well, Miss Nan," Carl Andrews exclaimed, "I wish you were a boy, and I'd take you up into the mountains with me and teach you how to handle a gun."
"What fun!" cried Nan.
"Yes, it would be great sport, and I warrant you'd like camp-life, too. It's just the sort of thing that you'd enjoy. Only I'm afraid it would agree with you so well that you would grow an inch a week, and considering you are a girl you'd better not get any taller."
"O dear! Don't say that," groaned Nan, "for I probably shall grow lots more as it is. You see I'm not quite sixteen yet. Do people ever get their growth before they are sixteen, Mrs. Andrews?"
"Oh, sometimes," replied the lady kindly. "I scarcely think you will grow any more, my dear. But I wouldn't worry about it in any case if I were you."
"But I don't want to tower over everybody," wailed the girl. "Just think, I'm head and shoulders above Miss Blake now!"
"But Miss Blake is a 'pocket Venus!' Just as high as one's heart," said Carl Andrews. "I took her home the other night and she barely reached to my shoulder."
"Then you and Nan must be about the same height!" said Helen.
Nan made a grimace.