“Let’s all go!” urged Grace. “We have just time enough before dressing for our call at the Ambassador’s. I am told that everyone goes for his own letters in Lenox. We shall see all the social lights. They say titled foreigners line up in front of the Lenox postoffice to look for heiresses. Ruth, you are our only heiress. Here’s a chance for you!” teased Grace.
Ruth looked provoked. “I won’t be called horrid names, Grace Carter!” she asserted, indignantly. “Heiress or no heiress, when my turn comes for a husband I won’t look at any old foreigner. A good American citizen will be a fine enough husband for me!”
“Hear! hear!” laughed Mollie, putting on her hat. “Don’t let us quarrel over Ruth’s prospective husband just at present. It reminds me of the old maid who shed tears before the pot of boiling fat. When her neighbor inquired what troubled her, the spinster said she was thinking that if she had ever been married her child might have played in the kitchen, and might have fallen into the pot of boiling oil! Come on, ‘old maid Ruth,’ let’s be off.”
The girls walked briskly through the bracing mountain air.
“I expect you will have a letter from Hugh or Ralph, Ruth,” Barbara suggested. “They told you they would write you if they could come to Lenox for the week of games.”
Ruth went into the postoffice to inquire for their mail. The other girls waited on the outside. A tall young woman swept by them, leading a beautiful English deerhound on a long silver chain. She had very blond hair and light blue eyes. Her glance rested on Barbara for the space of half a second.
“Dear me!” Barbara laughed. “How very young and insignificant that intensely superior person makes me feel! Maybe she is one of the heiresses Grace told us about.”
“Here is a letter for you, Grace!” said Ruth, returning to her friends. “The one addressed to you, Bab, is probably for you and Mollie together. It is from your mother. Then I have two letters for myself and two for Aunt Sallie. It is all right; Hugh and Ralph will be here the first thing next week,” announced Ruth, tearing open one of her notes.
“What would Aunt Sallie say if she could see us opening our mail on the street?” queried Barbara, as she promptly followed Ruth’s bad example. “But this is such a quiet spot, under these old elms, that I must have a peep at mother’s letter. Mother is having a beautiful time in St. Paul with Cousin Betty, Molliekins,” continued Bab. “And what do you think? Our queer old cousin is sending us another present. What has come over her? First she sends the beautiful silk dresses and now—but mother doesn’t tell what this last gift is. She says it is to be a surprise for us when we come back from Lenox.”
“What fun!” cried Mollie. “Our crabbed cousin is having a slight change of heart. She has always been dreadfully bored with Bab and me,” Mollie explained to Ruth and Grace, “but she is devoted to mother, and used to want her to live with her. But she never could make up her mind to endure us girls. Tell me some more news, Bab.”