“Oh, dear me,” she proclaimed. “To hear you, one would think you were still playmates, all making mud pies together. I don’t know that you and Jess, Amy Drew, ever will be grown up.”
“Hope not, if we have to grow into anything that looks and acts like you,” grumbled Amy.
But Jessie tried to pour oil on the troubled waters. “Just what did you come for, Belle?” she asked. After all, she must play hostess. “Is it anything I can do for you?”
“Some of us older girls are going to have a box party down at the Carter Landing on Lake Monenset the first moonlight night. Sally and I are on the committee of arrangements. We want 173 to talk it over with Darrington and Burd and get them to invite Mark Stratford.”
“Humph! You’ll have to use long distance or radio,” chuckled Amy.
“Now, don’t interfere, Amy!” said Belle sharply.
“Wait,” Jessie said, in her quiet way. “Don’t let us argue over nothing. The boys really are off on their boat. We do not know just when they are coming back. Why don’t you write Darry a note and leave it at the house?”
“Humph! I wonder if he’d get it?” snapped Belle, with her face screwed up as though she had bitten into something awfully sour.
“Well! I like her impudence,” muttered Amy, as Belle and Sally disappeared. “I don’t see how her mother ever let her grow up.”
“It is not as bad as all that,” her chum said gravely. “But it is awfully silly for Belle and those girls who go with her to be thinking of the boys all the time, and trying to get the older boys to show an interest in them. That is perfectly ridiculous.”