“Oh, Bet!” The other two looked up at their elder sister.
She turned and fixed her dark-gray eyes first on one face, then on the other. “Yes,” she said, nodding emphatically; “the packet is sure to hold money, and it will be a safe-guard. If we find the school intolerable we’ll have the wherewithal to run away.”
“I’ve read in books that school life is very jolly sometimes,” remarked Sylvia.
“Not that school,” was Betty’s rejoinder.
“But why not that school, Betty?”
Betty shrugged her shoulders. “Haven’t you heard that miserable creature, Fanny Crawford, talk of it? I shouldn’t greatly mind going anywhere else, for if there’s a human being whom I cordially detest, it is my cousin, Fanny Crawford.”
“I hear the sound of wheels!” cried Sylvia, springing to her feet.
“Ah, and there’s Donald coming back,” said Betty; “and there is Uncle John! No chance of escape, girls! We have got to go through it. Poor old David!”—here she alluded to the horse who was tugging a roughly made dogcart up the very steep hill—“he’ll miss us, perhaps; and so will Fritz and Andrew, the sheep-dogs. Heigh-ho! there’s no good being too sorrowful. That money is a rare comfort!”
By this time the old white horse, and Donald, who was driving, and the gentleman who sat at the opposite side of the dogcart, drew up at the top of the great plateau. The gentleman alighted and walked swiftly towards the three girls. They rose simultaneously to meet him.