CHAPTER ELEVENTH.
MAKING FRIENDS.
"Is not that neighborly?"
Miss Betty's tea party was the beginning of a new and happier state of affairs for Rosalind; one pleasant thing followed another. There were letters from the travellers, long and delightful and full of the genial spirit of the Forest, making her more than ever certain that they and she were alike journeying beneath its shelter, and at some turn of the road would surely meet again.
Mrs. Whittredge also had a letter, "I trust you will not keep Rosalind secluded," her son wrote. "I want her to have companions of her own age, and to learn to know and love the old town as I loved it. She has lived too much with Louis and me and story books; it is time she was waking up."
This explains why the Roberts children and the Partons received special invitations to call on Rosalind. Friendship began to seem to her a very different place as her acquaintance with it grew and neighborly relations were established with Maurice and Katherine. The gap in the hedge became a daily meeting-place, and grew slowly, but steadily, wider.
A few days after the tea party, Katherine asked Rosalind to go out to the creek with her, and on the way they stopped for Belle. While she went to find her hat, Rosalind made the acquaintance of the colonel and several dogs. Then the three strolled along the wide street, under the shade of tall maples, past pleasant gardens and inviting houses, until the street turned into a country road, and before them was Red Hill and the little bridge over Friendly Creek at its foot.
Under the bridge the water rippled and splashed over the stones, and out of sight, back somewhere among the trees, it could be heard rushing over a dam. The children seated themselves on a bit of pebbly beach.
"How nice to be near the real country!" Rosalind exclaimed. "At home we are near the park, but that is not the real country. We have to go miles to get there."
"But there are such lovely stores and things in the city," said Katherine.