Blue Bonnet turned quickly. It was the first time she had heard her baptismal name in months.
"I beg your pardon, Aunt Lucinda. I didn"t think. Please excuse me."
"Certainly, Blue Bonnet. But remember that it is very bad taste to be irreverent."
Blue Bonnet brought the catalogue over to Miss Clyde, and together they looked through it.
"It seems just the place for you, Blue Bonnet," Miss Clyde said. "The location on Commonwealth Avenue is ideal. It is within walking distance of most of the places where you will want to go. This is a great advantage."
Blue Bonnet curled herself up comfortably in the deep chair and looked out through the window dreamily. Slowly a smile wreathed her lips.
"Aunt Lucinda," she said after a moment, "do you know what I"d just love to do? I"ve been thinking of how much more I have than most girls, and I wish I could pa.s.s some of the good things along. Now, there"s Carita Judson. Wouldn"t she just adore a year in Boston? Why couldn"t I ask her to go with me to Miss North"s? There"s that great big room I"m to have with a bath, and all those advantages--" Blue Bonnet paused.
Miss Clyde was silent for a moment. Blue Bonnet"s impulses bewildered her sometimes, they were so stupendous.
Blue Bonnet was insistent.
"There"s all that money coming to me that my father left," she went on, "and Uncle Cliff says that some day there will be more--from him. What ever am I going to do with it? Carita Judson has an awfully poor sort of a time, Aunt Lucinda, awfully poor. She mothers all those small children in the family--"
"I daresay for that very reason she could not well be spared."
Miss Clyde was more than half in sympathy with Blue Bonnet"s idea; she knew through her mother of Carita"s fine father, of the girl"s sweetness and refinement in spite of her restricted means and surroundings, but she did not wish to encourage Blue Bonnet in what seemed an impossibility.
Blue Bonnet jumped up from her chair.
"I"m going to write to Uncle Cliff about it this very minute," she said, moving toward the door. "I know he"ll think it is a perfectly splendid idea."
"Would it not be better to wait until we have visited the school?" her aunt inquired tactfully. "There might not be room for Carita. The number of pupils is limited, you know. Suppose you wait until Uncle Cliff comes at Christmas. You could consult him then. It would be very unwise to get Carita"s hopes up and then disappoint her."
Blue Bonnet had not thought of this.
"But I shall ask him the minute he comes," she a.s.sured her aunt as she left the room, taking the catalogue with her. "Just the very minute! I know what he"ll say, too, Aunt Lucinda. He"ll say that happiness is the best interest one can get out of an investment. I"ve heard him, no end of times!"
The week ended delightfully for Blue Bonnet.
"It"s a sort of reward of merit for working so hard all these mornings,"
she said, as her grandmother granted permission to follow out a plan of Amanda Parker"s.
Amanda"s aunt had the second time invited the We Are Sevens for a week-end at the farm.
The girls were to take the street car as far as it would carry them--to be met at that point by a hay wagon.
Blue Bonnet was in high glee. A natural lover of the country, visions of a glorious time rose before her eyes.
She appeared at the corner drug store, where the girls were to take the interurban, a few minutes late. Aunt Lucinda had so many instructions at the last moment that she had been delayed.
The girls were all gathered, looking anxiously down the street. When Blue Bonnet appeared in the snowiest of white sweaters and tam-o"-shanter, as jaunty and blooming as if she were out for an afternoon walk, they immediately protested.
"For ever more, why didn"t you wear your old clothes, Blue Bonnet?"
Kitty Clark inquired. "That sweater will be pot black before you go a mile, and you"ll be as freckled as a turkey egg without some shade for your face."
"The sweater will wash, thank you, that"s why I wore it, and I"m not the freckly kind."
The shot was unintentional, but Kitty colored to the roots of her red gold hair.
"You are fortunate," she said. "I am."
"That"s the penalty you pay for having such a peach of a complexion,"
Blue Bonnet retorted, and the breach was healed.
At the end of the car line the hay-rack was waiting. The girls climbed on.
"Wait," Blue Bonnet shouted, jumping off quickly, "I almost forgot I want a picture of you."
While she adjusted the camera, the girls struck fantastic poses, Debby perching herself airily on the end gate of the wagon.
There was a warning cry from the girls, which the staid and sober farm horses misinterpreted. Off they started at a mad gallop, leaving the bewildered Debby a crumpled heap in the roadway.
She was on her feet before Blue Bonnet reached her, laughing and crying in a breath.
"How stupid," she panted. "I might have known that gate would fly open.
I guess I"m not hurt any."
Blue Bonnet felt Debby"s arms and limbs and made her stretch herself.
Then they fell in each other"s arms and laughed until they were weak and hysterical.
"It"s a good thing the roads are a bit soft," Blue Bonnet a.s.sured her, when she could get her breath. "You"re something of a sight with all that mud on you, but it broke your fall."
"Praise be!" Debby murmured, struggling to remove some of the dirt that insisted upon clinging to her skirts. "I"ll take mud to a broken limb, any day."
The rest of the journey was made in safety. Once the wagon halted for Sarah Blake to change her seat. Sitting just over the wheel was not altogether desirable. Sarah"s stomach rebelled. The whiteness of her lips spoke louder than words. Blue Bonnet changed places with her cheerfully, keeping strangely silent after the first half mile.
"What makes Blue Bonnet so still?" Kitty inquired, surprised.
"Take this seat and find out, Little Miss Why," Blue Bonnet retorted with an effort. "Maybe you haven"t as much regard for your tongue as I have. I want to keep mine whole."
The low, rambling farmhouse surrounded by green hills and ancient oaks, with cattle grazing peacefully on the gentle slopes, and the farm dog yelping frantically at the big gates, gave Blue Bonnet the worst pang of homesickness she had felt since she left the ranch.
Wreaths of blue smoke curled upward lazily from the kitchen chimney, and from the dooryard came the most tantalizing odors of chicken frying, coffee boiling, and fresh doughnuts.
Blue Bonnet jumped from the wagon and filled her lungs with the delicious fragrance.
"Girls," she cried, "just smell! It"s chicken and coffee and--"
"Doughnuts," Amanda finished with rapture. "Wait until you taste them!
Aunt Priscilla is a wonder at cooking. She has the best things you ever ate in your life."
Aunt Priscilla appeared in the doorway at that moment, a wholesome sweet-faced woman of middle age, and took the girls in to the spare bedroom to lay off their things and wash before supper.