"Any port in a storm," quoted Grace. "If I don't talk to some one I'll just have to ring myself up on the telephone. I'm dark blue."
"Nice compliment to your chum," remarked Louise, smiling good-naturedly.
"You know I didn't mean it that way, Weasie. But honestly, why is everything so horrid?"
"Guess because we are used to so much excitement we don't know how to slow down. At least that's what mother is always preaching."
"See, he looks! He sees!" gasped Grace, her voice not so blue or drab in tone as might have been expected.
The boy had lowered his umbrella, and touched his cap to the girls. He even smiled.
"Is it possible? At last!" Grace continued to elocute. "Now just watch me bring him to my feet."
She seized the arm of Louise and led her to the corner where the boy, as ever, was trying to devour his book. At their approach he quickly closed the covers, jammed papers in his pockets, and then waited to speak to the girls who had dragged him out of Round River a month before.
"Hello," he greeted them, and both were glad he was boyish enough to be frank, and not stiff.