"I have had the best birthday I remember, and I'm a thousand times grateful to all of you who helped make it that," he said, forestalling the thanks which they were all ready to pour out to him.
The tea room claimed the girls for two more days, and then came the longed-for Friday when they were to go to Crestville.
Mrs. Scollard, alone, was not to be of the party. She and Jeunesse Dorée, she said, would look after the Patty-Pans, for she could not well be spared from her duties at that time.
"Well, you take good care of yourself while we go out of the Patty-Pans into the mire," said Bob, hunting around for a mislaid blacking brush.
"That's what we did when we went up the first time, but there's no mire now, Bobsy; only 'the snow, the beautiful snow!'" cried Happie in high feather. Their libations to Jack Frost, which Aunt Keren had suggested, had not been in vain. The ground was white, the streets were vociferous with the Italian drivers of tip-carts, as the "white-wings" gangs labored to clear the snow away in the least possible time.
It was an early start that the eight o'clock train necessitated, but there was no other train until twenty minutes of two, and that would not get them to Crestville until nearly half past five—too late and too dark for pleasure-seekers. Besides, what was the use of wasting the valuable afternoon which might be gained by taking what Crestvillians called "the mail train"? This arrived at noon, in the sunniest, brightest part of the day. Nevertheless, catching it meant leaving the Patty-Pans at not much past seven. Not that there was any doubt of getting off. The Scollard family was stirring before six, and the first sound it heard was a pounding on the dumb-waiter, announcing that the Gordon boys were ahead of them.
Mrs. Scollard bundled her youngest into an extra coat as a protection against the mountain wind that she would face driving up from the station, and kissed her children all around with fervor enough to make up for the two days in which she should not kiss them. She clung to Margery and kissed her repeatedly.
"Good-bye, little Margery, good-bye, best of daughters. You're such a comfort to me, dear, and no one will ever love you quite as mother does," she whispered.
Margery looked at her, guessing, perhaps, the reason for this tenderness.
"I'm never going to be less than your eldest daughter, mother dear. I couldn't care for anything that took me from you," she whispered back.