"Sumfin' for Mollie," answered Dodo, leaning sulkily against the rail
while the girls regarded her anxiously. "An' if Mallie aren't nice to me
she can't have it."
"Oh, for goodness' sake be nice to her and get it over with, Mollie,"
urged Grace, uneasily conscious of the candy box she had shoved hastily
behind her. She was afraid one corner of it might show.
So Mollie got down from her perch on the railing and went over coaxingly
to the little girl.
"Give it to Mollie, honey," she begged. "I'll even call you Dora, if you
will."
"_Always_ Dora--_never_ Dodo?" asked Dodo eagerly, for she was
growing out of babyhood just enough to resent being called by her baby
name.
"Always Dora," Mollie promised.
For answer Dodo held out the white thing she had waved at them from the
street, and with a little cry of excitement Mollie saw that it was a
letter addressed to her in her Uncle John's firm hand.
At her exclamation the girls crowded round her eagerly. She hastily tore
open the envelope and devoured the contents. Then she turned to the girls
with a glowing face.
"It's all right, it's all right!" she cried, waving the letter round her
head like a flag and nearly upsetting her chums. "Uncle John says it is
settled. He is going to Canada for a couple of months and we can have the
lodge for the whole time he is away or a part of it, just as we wish.
Hooray! How's that for luck?"
The girls were so excited over their good fortune that they forgot all
about Dodo. She, finding herself unobserved, had slipped around the girls
to the swing, snatched the box of candy which Grace had exposed when she
got up, had taken the steps two at a time and was flying off down the
street before the girls saw what she was up to.
Then it was Grace who, with a dreadful premonition, thought of her candy.
She turned quickly, saw that the box was gone, and uttered a wail of woe.
"That little Turk of a sister of yours has done it again," she cried,
turning to Mollie, while Betty and Amy began to laugh. "You just wait till
I catch her. I'll get my candy back if I have to--spank her," this last
with a fierce scowl.
Betty put an arm about her excited chum, led her over to the swing and put
her down in it.
"By the time you caught Dodo there wouldn't be any of your candy left,"
she said, adding soothingly: "Never mind, honey. We will get you some more
if we have to take up a collection."
"Makes me feel like an orphan's home," grumbled Grace, but she laughed
nevertheless with the rest and immediately forgot both her candy and Dodo
in renewed excitement over Wild Rose Lodge.
"Just where is this place, Mollie?" asked Amy. "What is it called?"
"Oh, that's the very best part of it," said Mollie, with a mysterious
smile. "It has the most wonderful, most romantic name. Come closer while I
whisper it--Moonlight Falls. There, isn't that a real name for a place?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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