“Dan and Beersheba?” cried Hetty.
“Yes, Dan and Beersheba; and we’re going to have a real jolly time, and we’re going to forget dull care. It’ll be quite the most delightful sport we’ve had since we came to Haddo Court. What I should love most would be to vault over the fence and go all by our lonesome selves. But we must have a maid—a horrid, stupid maid; only, of course, she’ll walk behind, and she’ll leave us alone when we get to the farm. She’ll fetch us again by-and-by—that’ll be another nuisance. Still, somehow, I don’t know what there is about school, but I’m not game enough to go without leave.”
“You are changed a good bit,” said Hetty. “I think myself it’s since you were made a Speciality.”
“Perhaps so,” said Betty thoughtfully.
Sylvia nestled close to her sister; while Hetty knelt down beside her, laid her elbows on Betty’s knee, and looked up into her face.
“I wonder,” said Sylvia, “if you like being a Special, or whatever they call themselves, Betty mine?”
Betty did not speak.
“Do you like it?” said Hester, giving her sister a poke in the side as she uttered the words.
“I can’t quite tell you, girls; it’s all new to me at present. Everything is new and strange. Oh girls, England is a cold, cold country!”
“But it is declared by all the geography-books to be warmer than Scotland,” said Sylvia, speaking in a thoughtful voice.