"Now, did you ever in all your life?" demanded Happie of the world at large. And the world at large, in the person of Margery, Bob and Laura, replied that it never did! Even Miss Bradbury seemed elated over this remarkable coincidence of need and supply on both sides.
"Come on over and tell mother about it!" said Snigs, seizing Bob's arm, and gesticulating wildly to Margery and Happie, while plunging towards the door as if he feared the escape of the Patty-Pans or of his mother, unless they were at once permanently secured to each other.
"Go, if you like," Miss Bradbury supplemented. "I think I will unfold my plan to your mother this moment. The rule is not to talk to a nervous invalid at night, but I suspect that she is more sleepless now from worry than she will be from excitement over a prospect which, though not brilliant, at least holds a solution of her troubles."
The oldest Scollards having departed with and to their neighbors, Miss Keren-happuch went into their mother's room, and seated herself on the edge of the bed with an air of such resolution that the sick woman humorously wondered whether she had come to amputate or to execute.
"You are to be deported, Charlotte," she announced decidedly.
"Deported? Why and whence?" asked Mrs. Scollard.
"For precisely the same reason that the authorities always deport—because you are not fit to stay," replied Miss Bradbury. "We are going to spend the summer on my Pennsylvania farm, your family and myself."
"I didn't know you had a farm," gasped Mrs. Scollard, catching at the first thing that occurred to her to say, overwhelmed with the magnitude of the announcement.
"Neither did I, fully, until to-day," said Miss Bradbury. "I have never seen it, but I believe it will shelter us. As soon as you are able to move we are going, and our return is most indefinite. You are going to sub-let the Patty-Pans, furnished, and the girls are to keep house for us while we enjoy ourselves without a care upon our minds."
"Dear, dear Miss Keren!" sobbed Mrs. Scollard with the ready tears of nervous prostration. "How good you are! But do you think I could let you take my place, and support all my family for several months?"