"I have promised not to marry him," said Bab. "I have told him I will not so much as hear it spoken of for ages. As though I wanted to marry yet!"
But Jessamy waited to hear no more. She threw herself at Bab in some mysterious way, and hugged and kissed her sister—with a kiss for Tom, too—in almost hysterical rapture.
"It was pretty rough on me to be treated as I have been lately," said Tom, as they tried to settle down to sanity. "But I ought to have known what it meant; for the very first time I ever saw Bab, she threw herself at my feet, for me to pick up, or leave, as I chose."
"Why, Thomas Leighton!" cried Bab, indignantly.
"Fact, and you know it," affirmed Tom. "Never mind, Babbie; 'some falls are means the happier to rise,' you know. That fall of yours on the 'Blackboard' steps was one of them; for, my heart, aren't we happy!"
CHAPTER XV
WREATHING HOLLY AND TWINING BAY
TWO letters were despatched to Boston that night—one from Jessamy, one from Bab—like a duet chanted to Phyllis. The burden of one was, in brief, that the millennium had come upon earth, for Bab was so happy; and of the other: "Come home, come home!"