“Algernon tied him up, or he would have been there. He is a little rascal. It was a relief to me to have Perdita live up to her name and reputation, though,” said Hannah. “I heard about her all summer as a little mischief, and I never saw her do an indecorous thing. I didn’t see her do that.”
“Well, you may mark my words,” said Catherine, “before you have grown many years older you will hear astonishing tales of Perdita Osgood. Peter’s influence will not always keep her in check. Polly told me that yesterday she tried to vaccinate the cat, with a mixture of ground chalk and vinegar! Peter came for help to prevent her!”
“American children are pretty bad, aren’t they, Frieda?” said Alice mischievously, for Frieda’s lips were set sternly.
290“Don’t make her say so,” pleaded Hannah teasingly. “She has made such a beautiful record.”
Frieda flushed a little, but slipped her hand into her pocket and felt there the shape of the little carved frame of Karl’s picture and held her tongue once more. She would not quarrel with Hannah in this last hour for anything!
“Next year,” Hannah said thoughtfully, “I am surely coming to Dexter, and you three are to get the fire-wall room for us, and we’ll live in glory and rapture.”
“If it were only this year!” Alice moaned out the words, and the others sighed with her. The excitement of getting off had died, and they were becoming painfully aware of the separation that was approaching with every revolution of the wheels.
There were other passengers in the car, but they felt peculiarly alone, none the less. It was a curious tie that bound them. They felt that their friendship, so oddly started, had something more vital in it than most school-girl relations. They had all been sorry to leave bright, lovable Polly, but still, so long as they four stayed together, nothing could matter very much.
“O, dear,” sighed Hannah aloud. “I do think I spend all my time getting along without somebody or other!”
“‘We meet so seldom, yet we surely part so often,’” quoted Catherine musingly.