"Twice two are four, problematical Polly," laughed Bob. "You are forth already in my sense, but you may be fourth in yours, if you want to be. Go ahead, Ralph. I'll be there on foot in a week or so to unharness."
Happie ran into the house. She found her mother sewing, and Margery, looking sweet and young ladyfied, bending over her Mexican work.
"Six letters, motherums; two yours, one Margery's, three mine," Happie said, throwing herself down and fanning herself with her hat.
Mrs. Scollard read her first letter, which proved to be but a note, then opened the second one, read it, glanced at her two daughters with heightened color, and read it over. The elder girl was reading her letter from a girl friend, and trying not to show that it moved her, while the other munched a square of fig paste, looking absently out of the window, blissfully unconscious of what was in her mother's mind.
"This letter is from Auntie Cam, girls," Mrs. Scollard said at last.
"Yes, I thought so," said Happie. "She's a nice Auntie Cam, nicer than most own aunts; what does she say? I was wondering, motherums, if Aunt Keren would mind if we got a boulder and made a rockery out there on the side of the lawn? Only it isn't a lawn; it's just grass."
"Now, Happie, why don't you let mother tell us about Auntie Cam?" protested Margery. "As if you wanted to make a rockery this moment, right on top of your own question!"
"Somebody—two bodies, in a way—has an invitation from Auntie Cam that I rather dread to deliver," said their mother slowly.
Happie straightened her listless young figure and Margery dropped her letter, turning to her mother with parted lips, that asked the question they did not utter.
"Auntie Cam says, my dear lassies, that she would like to have Happie"—Margery turned away to hide the tears that sprang into her eyes in spite of herself, and Happie caught her breath—"have Happie come to her in New York, where she has returned on business for a few days, and go back with her to spend the rest of the summer with her and Edith at Bar Harbor, coming home by way of the White Mountains in September."