"Yes," she nodded hurriedly. "You see, mother thinks it's best. She says that they hadn't ought to be here now--with me; that it's my form'tive period, and that everything about me ought to be just right so as to form me right. See?" "Yes, I see," said Bobby, so crossly that Margaret opened her eyes in wonder. "Why, Bobby, you don't care 'cause they're goin' away; do you?" "Don't I?" he growled. "Humph! I s'pose 'twill be me next that'll be sent flyin'." "You? Why, you live here!" "Well, I say 'ain't' an' 'bully'; don't I?" he retorted aggressively. Margaret stepped back. Her face changed. "Why--so--you--do!" she breathed. "And I never once thought of it." Bobby said nothing. He was standing on one foot, digging the toe of the other into the graveled driveway. For a time Margaret regarded him with troubled eyes; then she sighed: "Well, anyhow, you don't live here all the time, right in the house, same's Patty and the rest would if they stayed. I--I don't want to give _you_ up, Bobby." Bobby flushed red under the tan. His eyes sparkled with pleasure--but his chin went up, and his hands executed the careless flourish that a boy of fourteen is apt to use when he wishes to hide the fact that his heart is touched. [Illustration: "FOR A TIME MARGARET REGARDED HIM WITH TROUBLED EYES."] "Don't trouble yerself," he shrugged airily. "It don't make a mite o' diff'rence ter me, ye know. There's plenty I _can_ be with." And he turned and hurried up the road with long strides, sending back over his shoulder a particularly joyous whistle--a whistle that broke and wheezed into silence, however, the minute that the woods at the turn of the road were reached. "I don't care," he blustered, glaring at the chipmunk that eyed him from the top rail of the fence. "Bully--gee--ain't--hain't--bang-up! There!" Then, having demonstrated his right to whatever vocabulary he chose to employ, he went home to the little red farmhouse on the hill and spent an hour hunting for a certain book of his mother's in the attic. When he had found it he spent another hour poring over its contents. The book was old and yellow and dog-eared, and bore on the faded pasteboard cover the words: "A work on English Grammar and Composition." CHAPTER VIII Tom, Peter, Mary, Patty, and the twins stayed at Five Oaks until the first of September, then, plump, brown, and happy they returned to New York. With them went several articles of use and beauty which had hitherto belonged to Five Oaks. Mrs. Kendall, greatly relieved at Margaret's somewhat surprising willingness to let the visitors go, had finally consented to Margaret's proposition that the children be allowed to select something they specially liked to take back with them. In giving this consent, Mrs. Kendall had made only such reservation as would insure that certain valuable (and not easily duplicated) treasures of her own should remain undisturbed.