rly carried out already? It is only to organize
what we are doing as it is."

"But the minute you _do_ organize! You don't know how difficult it is
in a place like this. A dozen of us are not enough, and as soon as you
go beyond, there gets to be too much of it. One doesn't know where to
stop."

"Or to skip?" asked Harry Goldthwaite, in such a purely bright,
good-natured way that no one could take it amiss.

"Well, yes, to skip," said Adelaide. "Of course that's it. You don't
go straight on, you know, house by house, when you ask people,--down
the hill and into the town."

"We talked it over," said Olivia. "And we got as far as the Hobarts."
There Olivia stopped. That was where they had stopped before.

"O yes, the Hobarts; they would be sure to like it," said Leslie
Goldthwaite, quick and pleased.

"Her ups and downs are just like yours," said Dakie Thayne to Ruth
Holabird.

It made Ruth very glad to be told she was at all like Leslie; it gave
her an especially quick pulse of pleasure to have Dakie Thayne say so.
She knew he thought there was hardly any one like Leslie Goldthwaite.

"O, they _won't_ exactly do, you know!" said Adelaide Marchbanks, with
an air of high free-masonry.

"Won't do what?" asked Cadet Thayne, obtusely.

"Suit," replied Olivia, concisely, looking straight forward without
any air at all.

"Really, we have tried it since they came," said Adelaide, "though
what people _come_ for is the question, I think, when there isn't
anything particular to bring them except the neighborhood, and then it
has to be Christian charity in the neighborhood that didn't ask them
to pick them up. Mamma called, after a while; and Mrs. Hobart said she
hoped she would come often, and let _the girls_ run in and be
sociable! And Grace Hobart says '_she_ hasn't got tired of
croquet,--she likes it real well!' They're that sort of people, Mr.
Thayne."

"Oh! that's very bad," said Dakie Thayne, with grave conclusiveness.

"The Haddens had them one night, when we were going to play commerce.
When we asked them up to the table, they held right back, awfully
stiff, and couldn't find anything else to say than,--out quite loud,
across everything,--'O no! they couldn't play commerce; they never
did; father thought it was just like any gambling game!'"

"Plucky, anyhow," said Harry Goldthwaite.

"I don't think they meant to be rude," said Elinor Hadden. "I think
they really felt badly; and that was why it blurted r