“Nettie,” said Judith, impulsively, “I love to have you to tell things to.”
“Is it warm in that green valley, Vale of Childhood, where you dwell? Is it calm in that green valley, Round whose bourns such great hills swell? Are there giants in the valley, Giants leaving foot-prints yet? Are there angels in the valley? Tell me—I forget.”
Jean had been crying; in fact, she was crying now, but the tears were stopped on their way down her cheeks by the rush of her new thought. She was always having new thoughts; but this was the most splendid new thought she had ever had in her fourteen years of life.
“I’ll do it!” she exclaimed aloud, springing to her feet. “I’ll just do it, and nobody will know but myself. I’ll go away to a new place and stay two weeks.”
In her delight she clapped her hands and whirled about the room. It was such a small room to clap your hands and whirl about in. That was the cause of her tears—that small room; that and the house, the farm, and everything she had to do—and doing the same disagreeable things every day, and never going anywhere.
School closed yesterday; and this morning Sophie Elting, her best friend, had gone away, for an _outing_ she called it, with a little city air she had caught from her cousins. She was going to the sea-shore to be gone two weeks.
“I’ll play go,” cried Jean, “and I’ll stay at home and do all the things here that people do when they go on an outing.”
The first thing was to pack up. Sophie had a new trunk, and had shown her all her pretty things packed snugly in it: cologne, a box of paper, new handkerchiefs, and ever so many things to go on an outing with. How could Jean play she had things which she hadn’t? And she had no trunk. She would “pack” in a shawl-strap.
She put in her Sunday dress, her morning gingham, two white aprons, her Bible and tooth-brush. She had ever so many things to take on an outing. In half an hour her shawl-strap was packed. She looked down at it with a sigh of relief and pleasure. Now she had started.
“Jean,” came up the stairway, “do you want to go to town?”
Of course she did! The coming back would be “getting there.” She was going into the country for two weeks to board. The boarding was a part of it. She had never boarded in her life; she would be a summer boarder at Daisy Farm.
