“Nonsense, Weezy,” retorted Kirke, “that sounds like a nestful of eggs! Let’s have it The Merry Six.”
“Why not The Happy Six?” asked Molly, with a roguish smile. “Let’s be happy now, just for a change.”
“Agreed, Molly, I’m willing, if Paul and Pauline are.”
“So am I, too,” assented Miss Weezy, though secretly preferring a half-dozen to six.
Paul was just now away on a visit, but when they proposed the question to Pauline that afternoon, she received “little Number Six” into the club with open arms, and declared that his extreme youth was no objection whatever. She had heard that as people grow older, they always approve of having young members come into their clubs. She was sure Paul would welcome Master Donald cordially, and would agree with them all that the new name proposed by Molly was exactly the thing.
Thus it happened that Donald and his “Mary Five” became straightway “The Happy Six;” and this is a true account of the transaction; though, to be sure, it had not been settled yet that the club was going to Europe.
“But what difference does that make?” asked Pauline. “Can’t we be The Happy Six, all the same, wherever we are? I move that we try to be happy right here in California till the middle of June, anyway, and then”—
“I second the move,” responded Molly.
“’Tis a vote,” cried Kirke and little Number Six in chorus.
And now, in the chapters that follow, you will hear more of this new brother-and-sisterhood, and will learn of its whereabouts and all its proceedings.