"Who said rain?" demanded Grace, lifting a tousled head from the pillow to survey the hilarious group scattered about the floor of the spacious room.
"Go back to sleep,—you dreamed it!" teased Bessie, who had begun to slip on her clothes. "'Twas snow we were talking about. Feels like it, anyway."
"It is pretty chilly," admitted Tabitha, shivering under the thin folds of her borrowed dressing-gown, as she turned away from the window and prepared to follow Bessie's example. "Wake up, thou sluggards, 'tis time you were dressed. Remember we have a long and arduous day ahead of us."
"Kitty must be tired," said Julia in mock sympathy, crawling out of her warm nest and jerking the blanket off her nearest neighbor with ruthless hand. "Is that it, Kitty? First you want it to rain, and then when you can't make it do that, you begin to moan about the length of the day before us."
"All wrong," Vera spoke up suddenly. "She is merely thinking of that dear, cross-eyed boatman at Avalon. You know he promised to give us a free ride to the Marine Gardens this morning, and here we all came away and dragged Tabitha with us. Shame on us! What could we be thinking about!"
Tabitha wisely joined in the laugh which followed this sally, and sent a pillow flying after her tormentor, who had made a wild dash for the hall. "No, sir, I'm not bemoaning my fate," she vigorously denied, with her mouth full of pins. "I know we shall have a splendid time at the ranch. Only it seems as if vacation had only just begun, instead of being nearly ended; and the day looks so cloudy and gray that it doesn't seem like a fitting climax for our lovely two weeks at Catalina."
"It is too bad that you got cheated out of all the fun this summer," Myra sympathized heartily. "But just you wait until the day is done before you say it is not a fitting climax— Gracious Caesar! Here's one of the autos already! Surely they can't be coming so soon! What time is it, anyway?"
"Half-past six," Gloriana answered, glancing at an open watch that lay on the library table.
"Half-past nothing!" cried Vera, tumbling hastily into the room with her eyes as big as saucers. "It is almost eight o'clock!"
"You are joking!" cried the rest of the group in wild alarm.