“Now for home and lunch. Jess, I have an idea—” Amy paused and regarded her chum meditatively. “Why not run into that darling little new restaurant down the street and have a bite to eat there? It will be a lark.”
“Suppose we do,” agreed Jessie. “I feel as though I would not be able to walk home without partaking of some nourishment first.”
“I declare, it is late,” said Amy, as she glanced from the store clock to her wrist watch. “If I had had any notion you were going to keep me so long in this place, Jess Norwood, I would not have let you come with me.”
“I like that!” laughed Jessie. “Especially since I have been waiting for you to get through for the past half hour.”
“So are the righteous slandered,” sighed Amy. “My friends have formed the habit of putting all the blame upon my frail shoulders— Hello, what have we here?”
She brought up short just outside the door of the shop and Jessie, following hurriedly, nearly ran into her.
“Why the sudden halt?” she inquired. And just then came a shriek, whether of joy or anguish it would have been hard to tell.
The next moment a small cyclone flung itself upon Jessie and held on to her, still shrieking—much to the delight of the passersby.
“Help, call out the reserves!” chortled Amy, her voice choked with laughter, while Jessie tried vainly to disengage herself from the clutches of the small cyclone. “Henrietta Haney, do stop that shrieking. Oh—oh, you will be the death of me, yet!”
By this time Jessie had been able to push her small assailant away from her, and, by holding very tightly to a pair of waving arms, found it possible to look into a small pointed face upon which every freckle stood forth.