"How lovely to travel that way! One could write a book about it!"
"Do you like to write? I hope then you will get a chance some day to visit all those countries."
Ivy shook her head.
"Not hopping around on those," she said bitterly, and with a few sympathetic questions he drew from her the sad story of her affliction. She was afterwards surprised at her own volubility, being, as a rule, very shy with strangers.
"I have seen children who were even worse than you completely cured," he said; he related several instances while Ivy listened with flaming cheeks and glistening eyes. A dozen questions trembled on her tongue when a crowd of girls came along, one of whom paused beside her, saying,
"Ivy, Ivy, come on! Don't you hear the bell?"
"Oh, Laura, I forgot all about eating," said Ivy somewhat ruefully.
The stranger smiled.
"Then you are the only one to forget, for see, the youngsters are racing from everywhere right upon us." He glanced at his watch. "Four o'clock—it's time for me to seek my place at the visitors' table!" He picked up his book and hat while the girls hurried away.
The children assembled in front of the Towers and marched in five battalions headed by chiefs wearing different colored tissue-paper wreaths.