"Really, Blue Bonnet? Do you mean it?"
"Of course I mean it. And Annabel--isn't it too splendid?--every one of
the Lambs has brought her average up to eighty, so we can all go! We are
to leave Friday and get back early Monday morning. Patty's perfectly
wild about it, and her mother's a dear."
Blue Bonnet hurried off to bear the good tidings, but the news had
preceded her. In Patty's room a group of girls chatted excitedly.
"Oh, Blue Bonnet, have you heard the news? We're to go--"
"I should say I have," Blue Bonnet interrupted. "I came to tell you."
"Well, Angela got ahead of you. Come in. Patty will be up in a minute.
She and her mother are making arrangements with Miss North. Isn't it too
utterly splendid?"
"And Fairview Cottage is the most ideal spot in the world," Angela put
in dreamily. "I'm so glad that it is full moon time. There's a place
around Sargentville called Caterpillar Hill, with the most fascinating
road winding up to it. I loved it so that I wrote an ode to it last year
when I visited Patty."
"Will the family all be there?" Sue inquired.
"I fancy not," Angela said. Being Patty's room-mate, she was well up on
the Paine affairs. "Mrs. Paine is going down to open the cottage for the
summer. The servants all went yesterday. Patty says she's going to try
to get the boys to come up over Sunday, but she isn't at all sure they
can--they're at Yale, you know."
"The boys" were Patty's two brothers, who were studying law at Yale.
"Isn't Sargentville the place where Ben Billings' family have a summer
home?" Sue inquired quite casually; but the remark brought a laugh. Ben
Billings, despite his very ordinary name, and Sue's particular aversion
to it, had sailed into her ken with meteor-like brilliancy. She had
changed her opinion of him since the visit to Harvard, and was the
object of considerable teasing. Such rhymes as the following had found
their way to her desk and room often:
"Her home is in the Middle West;
But what's the difference, pray,
With Harvard, dear old Harvard,
Scarce five miles away?"
"Yes, of course they have," Angela answered. "Ben was there last summer.
He was awfully attentive to me. We went rowing together no end of times.
Their home is only a stone's throw from Fairview. You must be awfully
nice to Mrs. Paine, Sue; maybe she'll ask you to remain on--over into
the summer."
Angela thoroughly enjoyed seeing the color mount Sue's cheeks, as Sue
adroitly changed the subject.
The girls found Sargentville all that Angela's highly colored
imagination had pictured it. Miss North permitted the girls to leave
Boston on Thursday night, so, arriving at Sargentville early Friday
morning, they had three full days at their disposal. And days filled to
the brim they were!
The first great treat was Fairview itself. Just why it was called a
cottage, baffled Blue Bonnet's Western conception of that title.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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