"Isn't Mrs. Hicks----" "Oh--_Hicks_. She's just a crosspatch! You all leave me to servants because I can't move. Nobody loves me the least little bit. I--I wish I were dead." To Jerry there was something very dreadful in Isobel's words. What if her wish came true, then and there? What if the breath suddenly stopped--and it would be too late to take back the wish---- "Oh, _don't_ say that again, Isobel. Can't I stay with you?" Isobel turned such a grateful face from her pillow that Jerry's heart was touched. Of course poor Isobel was lonely and she and Gyp _had_ selfishly neglected her. Even though Isobel did not care very much for her, she would doubtless be better company than--no one. She slipped the bathing-cap in her pocket and slowly drew off her coat and hat. "Do you mind staying?" Isobel asked in a very pleading voice. Jerry might reasonably have answered: "I do mind. I cannot stay; this is the afternoon of the great inter-school swimming meet and I am late, now, because I came home for my cap," but she was so thrilled by the simple fact of Isobel's wanting her--_her_, that everything else was forgotten. "Of course I don't. It's horrid and stupid for you to lie here all day long. Shall I read?" "Oh, _no_--after that dreadful tutor goes I don't want to see a book!" "Let's think of something jolly--and different. Would you like to play travel? It's a game my mother and Little-Dad and I made up. It's lots of fun. We pick out a certain place and we say we're going there. We get time-tables for trains and boats and we decide just what we'll pack--all pretend, of course. Then we look up in the travel books all 'bout the place and we have the grandest time--most as good as though we really went. Last winter we traveled through Scotland. It made the long evenings when we were shut in at Sunnyside pass like magic. Little-Dad has a perfect passion for time-tables and he never really goes anywhere in his life--except in the game." "What fun," cried Isobel, sitting up against her pillows. A few weeks before Isobel would have scorned such a "babyish" suggestion from anyone. "Where shall we go?" "I've always wanted to go to Venice. We got as far as Naples and then 'Liza Sloane's grandson got scarlet fever and Little-Dad went down and stayed with him. I'd love to live in a palace and go everywhere in little boats." "Then we'll go to Venice and we'll travel by way of Milan and Florence. Jerry, down in father's desk there are a whole lot of time-tables and folders he collected the spring he planned to go abroad. And you can get one of Stoddart's books in the library--and a Baedeker, too. We ought to have a whole lot of clothes--it's warm in Italy. Bring that catalogue from Altman's that's on mother's sewing table and we'll pick out some new dresses. What fun!"