The girls noticed the change, and once Mollie said, teasingly:
“Cheer up, honey. You know Will promised to bring Allen along, if he had to do it at the end of a rope. And you know, too, that Will is a man of his word!”
“I wonder,” Amy had added, casually, “if Allen has fixed up the matter of that old man’s will yet. He has been so very mysterious about it----”
“That he’s made us all curious,” finished Grace.
“I don’t see why,” said Mollie, pushing some burning scraps back into the heap of blazing paper, “he doesn’t tell us what he knows and let us share in the fun.”
“He will, when he gets ready,” said Betty, adding with a little caper she could not repress: “Oh, girls, it’s almost eleven o’clock. Aren’t you getting a bit excited?”
“Getting!” drawled Grace. “We have been, all along. Look at Amy,” she added with a chuckle, “hanging up a piece of rag and throwing her jacket on the floor!”
“She has it bad, poor child,” laughed Mollie, as, caught in the act, Amy laughed sheepishly.
“If you were attending to your own affairs, you wouldn’t have time to see so much,” she retorted, proceeding to restore her jacket to its proper place.
“There’s one thing we must remember,” said Betty soberly. “And that is, not to neglect our Old Maid of the Mountains just because the boys are here. I think she has come to depend on us more than we think.”
The girls agreed to this, saying that nothing should make them forget the lonely little old lady in the cabin up on the hill.
And then, a little before they expected them, came the boys.
The girls heard their voices before they saw them, and Betty’s heart jumped when she recognized Allen’s voice. Not till that moment had she realized how great had been her fear that his “mysterious” case would make it necessary for him to remain in town.
The girls gave one hasty moment to the smoothing of their hair, made untidy by a rather stiff breeze, and the next moment were rushing into the woods to meet the boys half way.
They had agreed not to show too much enthusiasm over the arrival of the latter for the reason, as Mollie had stated, that the boys were getting spoiled with so much attention showered upon them.
But in the joy of the moment the girls forgot all about their resolution, with the result that the boys were treated to a most riotous welcome.