“I’ll drop you off there, but I’m afraid you’ll have to walk back. Walking is good for the constitution,” the matron declared. “I often take the orphans on hikes. They know the country around here as well as I do. Take Danny, for instance. He’s only ten, but he can tell you more about the beavers than I can. He comes down to the pond and sits for hours just watching them. The late afternoon is the best time to see them.”
Judy glanced at her watch. “It is late afternoon, much later than I thought. I hoped Horace or Honey or even Peter would be here by now. But if anyone stops and asks, you’ll direct them to the woods road, won’t you?” she asked the Jewell sisters.
“Of course we will. Stop in and have a bite of supper with us on your way back,” Dorcas invited them.
“All of us?” asked Judy. “I’m afraid that would be an imposition. We’ll stop next time.”
“We’ll be back,” Holly promised. “Judy has been asked to get together a few things for an exhibit at the library. You may have some old cards or calendars—”
“We have plenty of things. Violetta and I were wondering what to do with them. Would you like old Christmas cards, Judy?”
“I’d love them.”
“Then you shall have them,” both sisters assured her in almost the same breath.
“They’re perfect dears, aren’t they?” Holly asked a little later as she and Judy and the matron of the orphanage were bumping along on the woods road in the green Beetle.
“Well, not perfect. Dorcas is a little too abrupt and Violetta a little too timid. I don’t want to be like them,” declared Meta. “I don’t want to grow old with nothing but memories to cherish. They aren’t enough. Of course,” she added after her car had bumped over a rough place where a tree had fallen, “the Jewell sisters have each other.”