“Or yours, maybe,” suggested Marie Hunter, the quiet brown girl in the corner. “What’s the matter, Win? You haven’t said a word for ages. I’ve been watching you.”
“I’ve been thinking!” explained Winnie, nodding her curly brown head with dignity.
“For the first time?” suggested Helen. “Don’t do it if it hurts, honey.”
“No,” said Winnie placidly, “I’ve often been known to do it.”
“Well, what were you thinking?” asked Edith Hillis, lifting her yellow curls from Marie’s lap. Edith was the fluffy member of the crowd, small for her age, yellow-haired and blue-eyed and rather too much dressed. She was supposed to care more for her complexion than for anything else on earth except Marie Hunter, but she was as sweet-tempered as she could be, and everybody liked her. “You looked as if you were thinking about something awfully interesting.”
“Well,” said Winnie slowly, “I was thinking about us. We know each other very, very well, and go together, and have gorgeous times—I was thinking that it would be nice if we made ourselves into a club, or some sort of a society.”
“Oh, say! That’s a perfectly gorgeous idea!” exclaimed chubby, red-haired Louise Lane, from behind Helen. “I vote we be a club, right away!”
“But is five enough?” asked Marie doubtfully. Marie was always the one who thought of things. She was a good deal of a bookworm, and did a great deal of beautiful embroidery, and never said much. But she was the one the girls were apt to ask advice of if they needed it badly. She was nearly a year older than Winnie and Edith. Louise wasn’t quite fourteen, and Helen would be fifteen in two months.
“I think five’s plenty,” said Louise.
“I don’t, exactly,” demurred Winnie. “Seems to me there ought to be seven or eight anyway, or we’d be like an army all major-generals.”