Winifred looked a little wistful, but she shook her head decidedly.
"Not without mother. If mother could go too, I should love it better than anything else in the world."
Mr. and Mrs. Hamilton exchanged glances, but they were both silent, and nothing more was said on the subject.
As soon as they rose from the breakfast table, Winifred went to put her letter away in the little box where she kept all her treasures, but before doing so she sat down on the edge of her bed, and read it all over again from beginning to end. When she had finished, her face looked even more wistful than before.
"I should like to go, oh, I should like it very much," she said, with a long sigh, "but I couldn't go anywhere without mother. I suppose when people have only had mothers a little while like me, they feel differently about leaving them from the people who have had them all the time."
The fact was, Winifred was feeling a little bit lonely. It was very warm in the city, and now that school was over, and all her friends had left town, she found time hang somewhat heavy on her hands. The children were a great comfort, of course, and her mother was everything to her, but she missed the work and the companionship of school, and there were times on those hot summer days when even story books seemed to have lost their charms.
She and Betty had become great friends during the time when Jack was in the hospital, and when Dr. Bell had decided that the seashore was the place for Jack, and the Randalls had given up their flat, and gone for the summer to board at Navesink—the kind doctor having procured accommodation for them in a house not far from his own—Winifred, although rejoicing heartily in her friends' good fortune, could not help feeling very forlorn without them. It was two weeks now since the Randalls had gone away, and Lulu's letter was the first news Winifred had received from any of her friends.
On this particular morning things were unusually dull. It was very hot, for one thing, and then her mother and Lizzie were both very busy in the kitchen, putting up strawberry preserves. Lulu's letter had suggested so many pleasant possibilities too. Certainly sea bathing and playing shipwreck in a real boat sounded much more attractive than reading story books in a hot little bedroom on the second floor of a New York apartment house. She did her duty faithfully by the children; dressed them all; set Lord Fauntleroy, Rose-Florence, and Lily-Bell at their lessons, arranged Miss Mollie's hair in the latest fashion, and gave Violet-May a dose of castor oil. Then when there was really nothing more to be done for her family, and she had learned from her mother that her services were not desired in the kitchen, she took up "Denise and Ned Toodles," and settling herself in the coolest spot she could find, tried to forget other things in the interest of a new story.
"Well, mousie, here you are; deep in a story book as usual."
At the sound of the familiar voice, Winifred dropped her book, and sprang up with an exclamation of pleasure.