small blessings,” laughed Lucile, referring to Evelyn’s last remark. “By the way, girls, have you heard about Margaret?”

“No; what is it?” They were all eager interest at once.

“Why, Judge Stillman called a consultation yesterday and the doctors pronounced Margaret absolutely cured!”

“Hurrah!” cried Jessie, springing up from the rock she had been using as a seat. “We knew she was better, but—oh, say, isn’t it great?”

“Rather; but that isn’t all,” said Lucile. “The Judge insists that we have done it all—and the camp-fire, too, of course.”

“Oh, nonsense,” Evelyn exclaimed. “It was the woods and the air and the water that did it. That was all she needed.”

“Humph, speak for yourself,” Jessie interposed. “I admit she could have done without you very well; I could myself, but——”

“Do I hear a gentle murmur as of buzz-saws buzzing?” quoth Evelyn, dreamy eyes fixed on space. “Methinks it grows more rasping of late——”

“For goodness sake, girls, stop it,” begged Lucile, despairingly. “If you are going to be like this all summer, 11 how on earth can I take you with me? I don’t want to live in a hive of hornets.”

“Take us with you?” they cried, bewildered. “What do you mean?” and Jessie added, tragically, “Tell me quickly or I die!”

“Oh, I just thought I might.” It was Lucile’s turn to regard the heavens fixedly.

“Lucile, I’d like to shake you. You can be the most exasperating thing at times!” cried Jessie excitedly, and Evelyn, with an inelegance that was none the less forceful, “If you have anything up your sleeve, let’s have it!”

Lucile’s gaze came down to earth abruptly.

“You seem to be in a great hurry,” she protested. “You haven’t given me time yet, you know.”

“Oh, we’ll hunt him up for you some other time,” Evelyn wheedled, and Jessie added, sagely, “We’re only losing him this way, you know;” then added, in desperation, “If you don’t explain right away, you’ll have a corpse on your hands, Lucy.”

“Why, there’s nothing to explain; you are just going, that’s all,” said Lucile, as if the matter were definitely settled.

“Lucy, are you fooling? If you are, I’ll never, never forgive you.” It was Evelyn who spoke, her whole body quivering with excitement.

“No, she’s in earnest; can’t you see? She means, she means——” and Jessie paused before the fateful word.

It was more than Lucile could stand. She jumped up, danced a few joyous and absurd little steps, then turning, made the girls a low bow.

“Greetings, fellow-travelers,” she said.

“But whatever put it into your head to take us along?” Jessie asked, after the first wild excitement had abated a trifle.

“Well, you see, it was this way,” began Lucile, with the air of one imparting a grave secret. “When Dad came home last night, the first thing he did was to begin asking me a lot of foolish questions—or, at least, they seemed so to me. He started something like this: ‘If you had your choice, what would you want most in the world——’”

“If he had asked me that, I wouldn’t be through yet,” Jessie broke in.

“Never mind her, Lucy,” said Evelyn. “Go on, please.”

“I felt very much that way myself, Jessie,” and Lucile nodded understandingly at the ruffled Jessie. “Well,” she went on, “I began naming over several things, and when I’d finished Dad looked so sad I thought I must have done something terrible, but when I asked him what was the matter he simply shook his head despairingly and sighed, ‘Not there, not there.’”

The girls laughed merrily.

“Oh, I can just see him,” chuckled Evelyn.

“Well, what then?” Jessie urged.

“Oh, I didn’t know what to do,” Lucile continued. “The more I asked him to explain, the more disconsolate he looked. When I couldn’t stand it any longer I left the room, saying if he didn’t want to tell me, he needn’t. Then, when I got outside the door I could hear him chuckling to himself.” 13

“Just like him,” again interposed Jessie.

“Well, all the time I knew something was coming. At dinner it came when Dad calmly announced that he was going to Europe on business and that if his family wished—imagine that, wished—he might let us go along.”

“Oh, my—wished!” murmured Evelyn.

“You should have seen Phil,” Lucile went on with her story. “I never saw anyone so dumbfounded. He stopped with a piece of fish halfway to his mouth and gaped at Dad as if he were some curiosity. I must have looked funny, too, for suddenly Dad began to laugh, and he laughed and he laughed till we thought he’d die.”

“‘You couldn’t look more dumbfounded if I had ordered your execution,’ he gasped when he could get his breath. ‘Of course, I can always make arrangements for you to stay behind.’”

“Oh,” breathed the girls in unison, “what did you say?”

“Say? You had better ask what didn’t we say. We talked and talked and talked as fast as our tongues would go till after midnight, and we wouldn’t have stopped then if mother hadn’t shooed us off to bed. Oh, I don’t think I was ever so happy in all my life!”

“But where do we come in?” insisted Jessie.

“Right here. You see, I had been so excited and everything, I hadn’t realized what it would mean to leave you girls for the whole summer. I guess Dad saw there was something the matter, for, when I started upstairs, he drew me back and asked me to tell him what was wrong. When I told him I wished you girls were going, too, he surprised me by saying, ‘Why not?’ For a moment I thought he was joking—he’s always doing that, you know—but when I saw he was in sober earnest I could have danced for joy.”

“Don’t blame you. I’d not only have felt like it; I’d have done it, too,” said Evelyn. 14

“Yes, and scandalized the neighbors,” Jessie sniffed.

“I fail to see how the neighbors would have known anything about it,” retorted Evelyn, with dignity, “since they can’t see through the walls.”

“Oh, they don’t have to see,” said Jessie, witheringly. “Anybody within a mile of you can hear you dance.”

“See here, Jessie Sanderson, that’s not fair,” Lucile broke in. “Evelyn’s one of the best little dancers I know, and I won’t have her maligned.”

“Have her what? I wish you’d speak United States, Lucy,” said Jessie, plaintively.

“Don’t talk and you won’t show your ignorance.” It was Evelyn’s turn to be scornful.

“Well, what does it mean?” Jessie returned. “You tell us.”

“Some other time,” said Evelyn, calmly. “You will have to excuse me now. I am so excited now that I really can’t bring my mind down to trivial matters.”

“I knew it,” Jessie was declaiming tragically, when a clear whistle sounded from the foot of the hill and Lucile exclaimed:

“There’s Phil; I wonder what he wants now.”

The three girls made a pretty picture as they stood there gazing eagerly down the slope, Lucile with her vivid gypsy coloring and fair-haired, blue-eyed Jessie, exactly her opposite, yet, withal, her dearest and most loyal friend; and last, but not least, Evelyn, short and round and polly, with a happy disposition that won her friends wherever she went.

Although it is generally conceded that “three make a crowd,” the rule was certainly wide of the mark in this