"I can hardly wait to tell those awful Cowans that they may get along as best they can. I'm so tired of them, Meta!"
"I know you are. I wouldn't mind the music so much if I had time. But it's dreadful when your own studies drag like millstones about your neck. I'm not clever at learning as you are, Rose. I have to work for what I get. So I shall tell them, next Tuesday, that I've decided not to teach any more till school's out."
Jack stopped on his way down the hall to look over our shoulders. "Huh!" he said, if you know what that means.
"Doesn't it look lovely?" asked Rose, her face all full of dimples. Rose is as pretty as a picture, anyway, and when she smiles, you can't help smiling back. Jack patted her cheek, and said, "It certainly does," and then he passed on abruptly.
"Something doesn't suit him!" I declared as he shut his room door behind him. "I can't imagine what it is, and it's of no earthly use to ask him." It wouldn't have been. You can't worm a thing out of that boy till he gets ready to tell.
Mother came up the stairs just then waving a note in her hand. "It's from Helen Hunt!" she announced joyfully. "She is going to spend a day and a night with us next week on her way to Grovesport. I shall be so glad to see her." Mrs. Hunt and mother have been friends more years than Rose and I have lived, and they very seldom meet any more. So we girls were almost as glad as mother was, because that dear woman doesn't have as many pleasures, as she deserves.
After we went to bed that night, we planned the surprise. The visitor should have our lovely new nest, and we'd go and camp in the shabby old guest-room. We knew it would please mother, for she hadn't had so pretty a place to entertain Mrs. Hunt in for many years. It did please her, too, so much that she almost cried, and she hugged us and thanked us till we felt very happy and self-satisfied. Jack was standing by, and he said "Huh!" again, in that same queer tone. Then mother turned and hugged him, and Rose and I said to each other how strange it was that Jack should be jealous of his own sisters.
It shone the day she came—the room, I mean, though the sun was on duty. too. Mother went to the station to meet her, and, as she started out, she called back, "Children, if any of you have occasion to go into my room while I'm gone, be sure to shut the door when you come out!"
We answered "All right!" all three at once, and then Rose said, "How funny!
What do you suppose made her tell us to do that?"
"I can't imagine," I replied, and then Jack smiled. If it had been anybody but our jolly old Jack, I'd have said his smile was sarcastic; but no one ever accused that boy of anything so ill-natured. Then he said in a quiet, even voice: "It doesn't take a Solon to see through that. She wants to make sure that Mrs. Hunt doesn't see the contrast between her room and the one across the hall. She might not understand—or approve."