"Of course it is," said Mrs. Hamilton, laughing. "Now run along with Aunt Estelle, sweetheart, and have a good time. I will come for you early to-morrow morning."
"Mother does seem very busy to-day," remarked Winifred, rather wonderingly, as she walked along by her aunt's side. "I wonder what she's going to do this afternoon. It can't be the preserves, because they're 'most done."
Mrs. Meredith made no answer, and Winifred soon forgot her curiosity in the interest of other subjects. But she would have wondered a good deal more if she could have heard the words her mother was at that moment saying to Lizzie, for no sooner had the door closed behind Winifred and her aunt than Mrs. Hamilton hurried back to the kitchen.
"We can begin right away now, Lizzie," she said, laughing; "the darling is safely out of the way for the rest of the day, and we shall have to work like beavers to accomplish all we have to do. In the first place, I want you to come with me to the storeroom, and help me to get out that big trunk."
Winifred had a very pleasant afternoon. She helped Norah with the silver, and read aloud to her, and then there were Hannah, the German cook, and Josephine, the French maid, to be talked to, and they both seemed much pleased to see her. In the evening Uncle Will and Aunt Estelle made much of her, and when bedtime came, although she missed her mother's good-night kiss, still it seemed so natural to be going to bed in the old familiar nursery, where she had spent so many nights, that she could almost fancy the past happy months were all a dream, and that her mother had never come back from California at all.
"Only no dream could possibly be so lovely as it really is," she said to herself, settling herself comfortably on her pillow when Aunt Estelle had put out the light and gone away. "Oh, I am glad it isn't a dream, but something really true. I was a wicked girl to wish I could go to the country and do something different, when I've got such lots and lots of things to be happy about."
"This is the very perfection of a summer's day," Mr. Meredith remarked at the breakfast table next morning. "I wish I were not obliged to spend it cooped up in my office. A trip to the seaside now would be very much to my liking."
"We're going to take excursions sometimes this summer," said Winifred brightly. "Father says perhaps we may go down to Manhattan Beach for a Sunday. Did you ever go to Manhattan Beach, Uncle Will?"
"Yes, several times. I have been to Navesink too. Isn't that where your friends, the Bells, are spending the summer?"
"Yes; Lulu says it's a beautiful place. She asked me to come for a visit, but I can't leave mother."