"Come soon again, come often after tea," said Margery, as they paused at the Neumann gate for the prolonged parting of girlhood.
"I shall," said Gretta with a prompt decisiveness that delighted Happie. "After I get my work done, my cousins haven't any right to keep me home, and I'm coming if you'll leave—let me."
"We'd be only too glad," said Margery heartily. "We haven't any girls up here to run in; all our friends are in New York, so come up to keep us from getting lonely, Gretta."
Happie only squeezed Gretta's hand. She was delighted that Margery and her "treasure trove," as the boys called her, got on so well together, and bright visions of Gretta's future danced before the warm brown eyes which revealed to the world the love in Happie's generous heart.
A week later Miss Bradbury came down in the morning with the ravages of sleeplessness plainly visible on her face.
"I've heard noises all night," she said in reply to inquiries. "I don't know what they were, but I dislike them. Boys, I wish you would drive down to the store and buy that watchman's rattle we saw there, and stop at Peter Kuntz' and tell him I'll buy his dog."
"There wouldn't be much use in rattling, dear Miss Keren," laughed Mrs. Scollard. "Nobody could hear you."
"And don't you know you asked us to put those bean poles in the garden, and set the pea brush?" added Bob. "They really need doing, and we can't do that and go to the village too."
"Then Happie must get Gretta to drive down with her," said Miss Bradbury decidedly. "I haven't been free from nerves all my life to let them get the upper hand of me now without an effort to check them. I must have the rattle and the dog. Don Dolor is able to make the trip now."