But, "Amy! Amy! Where are you?" woke up my foolish reverie, and "Will and I have been hunting all over for you!" were the half-annoyed words which followed, as my friend Irene Sloane and her brother stood before me in our second-floor front room.
Irene was my most intimate friend; it was rare when a day passed without her being in my house or I in hers. Therefore the absence of ceremony in the hunt she had just made. Her brother, too, I had known always, and now that they had rushed in—for rushed is the only way to describe their entrance, so excited and all of a flutter they seemed—I forgot all about my foolish dreaming, and exclaimed, "Do sit down both of you, and tell what's up!"
But Irene was too excited to sit down; she had come to tell a "splendid plan. And don't you think so, Will?" and it was "Mamma's idea," and much more of a similar purport, until Will, who had taken a chair, hastily rose, and with a most sober face and energetic manner, exclaimed:
"Irene, what's the use of beating about the bush any longer? Tell Amy all about it, and then she'll have a chance to have her say too."
"Well, the plan is to form an Amusement Club. It will seem awfully stupid to be at home after all our fun last summer. Don't you think so?"
"Certainly I do, for I was thinking just before you came that we'd gotten back to hardtack sure enough; there seems nothing to look forward to but books and study."
"Oh, hardtack fiddlestick! I'm ashamed of you both," interjected Will; "though I'm willing to admit," the boy continued, with a deep sigh, "it does come awfully hard to study after such a long loaf. But this Amusement Club will fix us up fine; it will give no end of jolly times, for, only think, we'll all meet once a week, or once a fortnight, and that will be amusement enough for one evening."
"Do explain it, Will. I can't make any sense out of what you are trying to tell me."
"Mamma will explain, for she said she would take charge of the first meeting."
"Yes," interrupted Irene, and then excitedly tossing her two long braids back, "the first meeting is to be at our house next Saturday afternoon at three o'clock. What do you think of that for a starter?"