There was no "crash" audible in the library where Miss Bradbury and Mrs. Scollard lingered, but they heard a wild whoop from Bob, and then a clamor of voices as he and Gretta and Laura poured out questions, and Margery and Happie answered them as excitedly.
"Dear Miss Keren, you are so good to me and my children!" said Mrs. Scollard, as she saw that Miss Keren was listening to the babel in the room beyond in the highest satisfaction. "Think of all that we owe you already! And now you offer to be responsible for the girls financially, and to let them try this scheme of theirs! I can't bring myself to the point of feeling less than guilty to allow you to do so much."
"You may feel perfectly innocent, Charlotte, for I should do it in one form or another whether you would or no," affirmed Miss Bradbury. And when she said a thing she left little room for doubt that she meant every word that she said. "I have certain plans tucked away in the back of my head in regard to your children," she continued, "and I shall certainly carry them out. Don't forget, Charlotte, that in all the world there is no one who has the claim of kindred upon me; no one with closer ties between us than bind me to you, my beloved friend's daughter, and to her grandchildren, your children. So I shall look after them as far as I can. So much for that part of it, and never let me hear you allude to obligations again! As to the rest, I am not, privately, especially sanguine about the success of the plan these girls have made, and yet it really is a good one, if their inexperience and youth do not defeat it. I thoroughly approve of helping people to carry out their own ideas, however, and not in trying to force one's own upon them. So—unless you had objected—I should like to be responsible for the beginnings of the attempt, and let the girls consider what I expend as a debt to be repaid. I shall back them, Charlotte; that's all."
"And enough," supplemented Mrs. Scollard. "A financial backer is styled an 'angel,' isn't he—in theatrical parlance? I begin to see why."
Miss Bradbury departed in the early frosty morning of the next day. She was gone a week before she wrote announcing her return on the day before Thanksgiving. Not a word did she say of her errand, nor allude to the coming of the Gordon boys. But just when Happie and Bob—and the others of a lesser degree—were beginning to make up their minds that they were defrauded of all that would make the festival festal, and that their disappointment was too sharp to be borne, there came a telegram of but two words. "Boys coming. Keren-happuch," was the burden of the dispatch. There was but one conclusion possible: Miss Keren-happuch was indulging in teasing.
"Youth must be catching," remarked Happie, flying about the room with a feather duster, for it was too late to use a cloth—there were a dozen things to be done, and train time drawing on apace. "Aunt Keren would never have played us a trick like this before she had had the benefit of living with five young Scollards."
"You are Ralph's hostess this time, Gretta," said Laura. "Since he was here you have got the Ark."
"That's so!" cried Bob. "Let's dress up Gretta and put her on a sort of throne in the corner, and bring Aunt Keren and both boys to pay homage to her as their hostess."
"Well, I guess you won't!" cried Gretta, flushing at the bare idea of such a thing.
"Let's all dress up," cried Polly. "Let's look just as funny as we can, and stand in a row all across the steps when Bob drives up."