"Yes; you see, papa thinks I can prepare for my First Communion better in the school than here, and you know I want to make it with you next June."
"Oh!" cried Margery, who had been sitting in speechless grief, a little ray of light breaking into the gloom of her face. "Then you're not going far?"
"Oh, no; only in town. I can come home at Easter, and June will soon be here," replied Jack.
"And we can write to him," said Amy, trying as usual to see a bright side.
"But it will be so lonesome without Jack," said Margery, her voice quivering, for she had never had a brother, and this cousin had been all to her that a brother could be.
"It's a pity he must go," said Trix, tilting one foot up and down on the toe of her slipper, which she thus slipped on and off at the heel in a pensive manner; "but as Amy says, we can write to him, and the post-office will be more fun again," thus admitting by implication what no one had been willing to confess, that the post-office was less delightful than at first.
Silence followed this remark. Amy and Margery looked at one another.
"We should have to take the post-office in the house," Trix went on, continuing her line of thought. "No one could go down into the orchard for mail all winter."
"And what house could we put it in?" asked Margery. "None of us wants to be postmaster all the time now, though we did at first, and it would be a nuisance for any of us to have to go into some one else's house to take care of the mails."
Neither liked to be the one to propose discontinuing it, but Jack did not mind, because since he was going away he could not bear his part in it that winter in any case.