t nearly so pleasant a sound to me now as Hannah. And the child
thought no one would write to her if she signed her own name,--it was so
'homely'! Ah me! I suppose I should be getting dressed instead of
sitting about in the sunshine, mooning. I wonder if Inga will remember
the muffins for breakfast."

* * * * *

"Polly Osgood wants to see you, Catherine."

Catherine, busily sorting linen in the up-stairs linen room a little
later in the morning, leaned over the railing in answer to her mother's
announcement from the hall below.

"O, Polly, do come on up. I've a little more to do and we might just as
well talk while I'm at it. Have you called the Boat Club meeting?"

Polly Osgood came running up the stairs. She was a slender little girl
with big blue eyes and yellow hair.

"Yes," she answered brightly. "I've called it at ten. It's almost that
now. Tom can't come, of course; he's always so busy daytimes, but I
think all the others will be there."

"Hasn't Bert something to keep him?"

"Not just now," Polly laughed. "He substituted in the post-office last
week, and the week before that in a hardware store, but just now he says
nobody seems to need him, and he's reading law in private."

"He's such a goose," and Catherine put two mated pillow-cases together
with a little pat. "Inga never knows enough to put things in pairs, and
Mother wouldn't dare begin to look them over. If she should do anything
so domestic, half Winsted would break out with mumps or chickenpox.
Where did you say we'd have the meeting?"

"At the boat house. We might as well use it, now we have it. But I
didn't know you broke out with mumps."

"That's only figurative. Polly, why have you gone back to braids and
bows? You look very infantile for a real Wellesley sophomore."

"I got tired of the bird-cages and puffs, and decided I'd go back to
nature. Besides, playing around with Peter and Perdita you need
something stationary. They work dreadful havoc with a stylish coiffure."

"I wonder if I'd have to put my hair down just to teach them on Sundays?
Mrs. Henley is going away, you know, and I've been asked to take her
class."

"O, I do hope you will," cried Polly. "You would have a civilising
influence on Perdita, and she needs it. Peter keeps her in order so well
she never _does_ anything very bad, but she is potentially a little
terror."

"She always seems very mild when I see her," commented Ca