"Whether you like it or not, I am glad you are out of the whole thing. I should hate you to get into trouble. You are so clever, and so different from the others, that you are certain to succeed. And now let us hurry home. I must tell you all about our scheme. You must come to me every day; Miss Renshaw will be with us each evening from six to seven. Oh! you don't know how happy you are making me."
Mrs. Weldon came out to meet the two girls as they entered the pretty little cottage. Her face was smiling.
"Ah, Cassandra!" she said, "now you will be happy."
"Indeed I have, Mrs. Weldon," said Ruth; "and I scarcely know how to thank you."
"Come in, dear, and have some dinner.--Cassandra, I have just heard from Miss Renshaw, and she is coming this afternoon.--You can either stay, Ruth, when dinner is over, or come back again."
"I will come back," said Ruth. "Granny is not very well, and I ought not to have left her, even to have dinner here; but I couldn't help myself."
Cassandra brought her friend into the house. They had a pleasant meal together, and Ruth tried to forget that she had absolutely quarrelled with Kathleen, and that Kathleen's heart was half-broken on her account.
But Kathleen herself was determined not to give way to any real feelings of misery on account of Ruth's desertion.
"I have no time to think about it," she said to herself.
When she returned to the house she found a telegram waiting for her. She tore it open. It was from Aunt Katie O'Flynn:
"I have arrived. Come and have dinner with me to-night at the Métropole, and bring any friend you like."
"What a lark!" thought Kathleen. "And what a chance for Ruth if only she had been different! Oh, dear! I suppose I must ask Alice to come with me."
"Whom is your telegram from, dear?" asked Mrs. Tennant, coming up to her at that moment.
Alice was standing in the dining-room devouring a book of Greek history. She held it close to her eyes, which were rather short-sighted.
"It's from Aunt Katie O'Flynn. She has come, the darling!" said Kathleen. "She wants me to go to London to dine with her to-night. Of course I'll go.--- You will come with me, won't you, Alice? She says I am to bring some one."
"No, I can't come," said Alice; "and for that matter no more can you. It takes quite thirty-five minutes to get to Charing Cross, and then you have to get to the Métropole. We girls are not allowed to go to London by ourselves."