“May be Mrs. Kitto won’t have room for Harry,” suggested Molly faintly.
Kirke dashed this hope to the ground. Harry, he affirmed, could be rolled into any corner like a foot-ball.
“The question is simply this, children,” said Mrs. Rowe, buttering a biscuit for Donald to eat on the car; “will you devote a part of your vacation to your little neighbor, or will you spend the whole of it in amusing yourselves? You shall decide.”
“O mamma! please don’t leave it that way. Don’t put us on our honor,” entreated Molly, with a shrug.
“Because, when you put us on our honor, we have to do a thing, even if we hate it like poison,” added Kirke, groping under the sideboard for the yellow kitten.
Kitty’s basket was ready, with a slice of roast beef at the bottom, and a smart blue bow on top; and now at the last moment Ginger had refused to be put in.
“Head her off, Molly. Shut the door, Weezy. Look out, Don, or I shall run over you!”
Kirke shouted his orders like a general in battle. Everybody jostled against everybody else, and Ginger was no sooner captured than the carriage came to take them all to the station. Then followed the excitement of the journey and of the arrival at Santa Luzia; and for several days nothing further was said about Harry Hobbs.
CHAPTER IV
LEARNING TO SWIM
The children were delighted with the lovely little city of Santa Luzia, which lay upon the coast, snuggling in its arms a placid, sunny bay. For the first week after their arrival Weezy never tired of watching the sails on the water, and of counting how many she could see from her window at “The Old and New.”