ne, and no one would know if you laughed, but when I
ran out, our piazza was full of people, and when Arabella shouted, you'd
ought to have seen them look.

"Flossie and her Uncle Harry were on the lawn, and as she rode past, he
said with a sigh:

"'Arabella, Arabella,
If I had my new umbrella,'

and I was wild to know the rest of it, but his wife, who was standing
near him, said:

"'Hush, Harry, really you mustn't,' and he only laughed, and said:

"'Oh, _mustn't_ I? Why, when I saw Arabella and her Aunt Matilda, I
really felt as if I _must_!'"

"Let's ask him what the rest of the verse is," said Dorothy.

"I'm wild to hear it," Nancy said, "because the very way he looked made
me think that the other lines, whatever they were, would be funny."

She stooped to gather more of the little blossoms to add to Dorothy's
bouquet, and then commenced to make a bouquet of her own.

"Arabella will be coming over to see you," she said, a moment later,
"and I wonder if it is naughty to say, 'I wish she wouldn't?' Do you
think it is?"

"I don't know," said Dorothy, "but I _do_ wish it. I wouldn't, only she
is so hard to please. Mamma wishes us to be nice to every one, but,
Nancy, you _do_ know that when we try the hardest to please Arabella, we
don't please her at all."

"I know it," agreed Nancy, "but perhaps she'll come some time when we
are out, and then we won't have to amuse her."

"I'm sure I ought not to say it, but I _do_ wish it would happen that
way," said Dorothy.

They had reached the birches, and they paused to wake the echo. What fun
it was to hear their shouts repeated.

Again and again they called, and then a droll thing happened. They had
called this name and that, and each time the echo, like a voice from the
mountain, had repeated it with wonderful distinctness. Then Dorothy,
leaning forward, called, loudly:

"Dorothy!"

"_What?_" came the reply.

She turned, and looked at Nancy. "Dorothy!" she cried, again.

"_Dainty!_" was the answer, and upon looking toward a little path that
was nearly opposite where they were standing, they saw the low bushes
move, and faintly they heard a smothered laugh.

Dorothy was laughing now.

"Boys!" she cried, and back came the laughing echo:

"_Girls!_" and then the boys peeped out a bit too far, and Dorothy saw
who had been playing echo.

It was Jack Tiverton and a boy whom he had chosen for a "chum." Jack had
not intended so soon t