“Of course we are willing!” cried Lilian.
“The ones who live far can take the first part of the summer, and the last, just before college opens, and the ones who are close can fill in during the midsummer,” said Molly, immediately grasping the possibility of the plan.
“Well, I’ll leave it to you young ladies to work up, and when you care to, I’ll take you over the place. There is a good house and well and plenty of fruit,—apples to feed to the hogs——”
“That suits me!” declared Edwin, who had been quiet while his cousin was unfolding the plan. “I see no reason, seriously, why this idea should not be wonderfully successful,—not only should it bring you back to college and keep you for the same, or even less, money than you have hitherto had to pay, but it will at the same time help materially in the food situation that the country is going to have to face.”
“Will you be one of that committee that must take hold of this thing?” asked Billie.
“If the student body so wishes!”
“Well, we so wish!” came from twenty throats.
“You and Mrs. Green,—she is already one of us. As for you, Major Fern, we hardly know how to thank you for what you have done,” said the president of the juniors.
“Don’t thank me! I have done nothing! Instead of selling a farm at a loss when I can’t get labor to work it, I am going to ask some beautiful young ladies to work it for me.”
“We might drink him down,” whispered a timid girl.