"The last word was in big letters," said Bob as he finished reading his copy of the impressive announcement, and Ralph took a header into the couch in fresh enjoyment of it. "And you can bet the very last thing that you have, or ever hope to have that they'll come all right!"
"Come!" echoed Rosie. "Why, you couldn't keep 'em away! They'll think it's goin' to be something great, and that you all had a hand in it. What in creation do you s'pose she's a-goin' to do?"
"Sing and play, just as she says she is, and read to the audience—from her own poems, most likely. Oh, mother, isn't it awful?" cried Happie, her sense of humor so overwhelmed by her mortification that she was unable to get even as much as Bob's divided amusement out of the discovery of Laura's scheme.
"It is the most absurd thing!" cried Mrs. Scollard, flushed and annoyed, yet half laughing. "I feel that I ought not to let the absurd child go on; she is sure to make a little goose of herself, and the village people will take it all seriously, for they will certainly think that I have helped her! Yet Laura's conceit needs a sharp lesson, and she must be punished, in one way or another, for utterly ignoring her elders in this way. I feel confident that she will be punished if we leave her to her own destruction, for she is abnormally thin-skinned. I really don't know what to do!"
"Let her go, mother; we can stand it, and I think she deserves to be called down—the conceited little ninny!" said Bob vigorously. "And if she doesn't take a tumble this time, I'm no prophet."
"Don't you boys help her to 'take a tumble.' If we let her alone to go on, we must also let her alone to succeed, if she can," interposed Mrs. Scollard, mistrusting the boys' strength to resist the temptation to tease, and dreading Laura's punishment, after all.
"Don't harbor misgivings, Charlotte," advised Miss Bradbury. "Let Laura learn by experience. Country people are not the dunces she evidently thinks them; if I'm not mistaken she will be both sadder and wiser on the fifth of July."
"Yes, let her alone," Rosie said decidedly. "I'll see to it the place knows you hadn't nothin' to do with this affair. Just see what she'll make of it. My days, what kind o' jedgment has Preacher Buck to leave her have the church?"
Ralph and Bob went down in the afternoon to bring up from the station Snigs and the dog. It was a jubilant trio—quartette—that entered the Ark in time for supper. Dundee, the collie, was nervous and tired, but he was a beauty beast, and Miss Bradbury actually hurried through her supper to make him a bed outside her door, "in case of further noises," she explained.