o me and tell me what you are doing, and I'll be glad enough to answer
you."

"Indeed we will," said Reuben Jenks. "Let's write Randy a long letter,
each one of us writing a part of it and send it along to Boston, just to
show her what we can do when we try."

"Oh, what fun!" said Randy, "it will seem as if you were with me when I
read a long letter in which all my friends are represented."

"Lemme print something in it, Reuben, will you? I want to be in the big
letter, too," cried little Prue.

"I guess I will let you," Reuben answered heartily. "What kind of a letter
would it be if you didn't have a hand in it, Prue?"

"I'd like to be going to Boston if it wasn't for one thing," said Molly
Wilson, "and that's those city girls."

"Oh, ho, Molly. I thought you were shy, and it ain't city girls you hanker
for? Then it must be city boys," said Reuben.

"'Tis not, Reuben Jenks," said Molly, with unusual vim; "'tis not any such
thing, it's just that I'd be 'fraid those horrid city girls were watching
everything I did and thinking me countryfied."

"Well, I shall not let that idea make me uncomfortable," said Randy,
stoutly. "I _am_ a country girl, and if they say so, they will not be
telling me anything new or surprising; beside, I think that there must be
nice girls in the city as well as among us here. I intend to like them,
and I hope that they will like me."

"They'll be precious queer girls if they don't," said Jack Marvin.

"I wanted to go to boarding school," said Phoebe Small, "but I didn't
mean a city school. Seems to me I'd rather 'twouldn't be city girls to get
acquainted with. Don't you wish they were not city girls, Randy?"

"I believe that there are just as pleasant girls in Boston as there are
here, and I look forward to meeting them," said Randy.

She spoke bravely and truthfully, yet afterward when in her little chamber
the conversation recurred to her, Randy found herself wondering if the
meeting between herself and these girls who were to be her classmates
during her stay in Boston would, after all, be as delightful as she had
fondly believed.

Randy's pleasure at the thought of meeting them had been genuine, and so
friendly and sincere was she, that until the idea was suggested by Dot
Marvin it had never occurred to her that the meeting could be aught but
delightful.

"I ought not to think that there could be anything which is not charming
where Miss Dayton is, and I believe I'm silly to