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.

"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 case. The girls were bound by a tie
even stronger than friendship, and that t