for dinner, and of course Aunt Trixie
was the last and crowning suggestion. It was not far to send, and she
was not long in coming, with her second-best cap pinned up in a
handkerchief, and her knitting-work and her spectacles in her bag.

The Marchbankses never made sofa-covers of brown waterproof, nor had
Miss Trixies to spend the day. That was because they had no back-door
to their house.

I suppose you think there are a good many people in our story. There
are; when we think it up there are ever so many people that have to do
with our story every day; but we don't mean to tell you all _their_
stories; so you can bear with the momentary introduction when you meet
them in our brown room, or in our dining-room, of a morning, although
we know very well also that passing introductions are going out of
fashion.

We had Dakie Thayne's last visit that day, in the midst of the
hammering and binding. Leslie and he came in with Ruth, when she came
back from her hour with Reba Hadden. It was to bid us good by; his
furlough was over, he was to return to West Point on Monday.

[Illustration]

"Another two years' pull," he said. "Won't you all come to West Point
next summer?"

"If we take the journey we think of," said Barbara, composedly,--"to
the mountains and Montreal and Quebec; perhaps up the Saguenay; and
then back, up Lake Champlain, and down the Hudson, on our way to
Saratoga and Niagara. We might keep on to West Point first, and have a
day or two there."

"Barbara," said mother, remonstratingly.

"Why? _Don't_ we think of it? I'm sure I do. I've thought of it till
I'm almost tired of it. I don't much believe we shall come, after all,
Mr. Thayne."

"We shall miss you very much," said Mrs. Holabird, covering Barbara's
nonsense.

"Our summer has stopped right in the middle," said Barbara, determined
to talk.

"I shall hear about you all," said Dakie Thayne. "There's to be a
Westover column in Leslie's news. I wish--" and there the cadet
stopped.

Mother looked up at him with a pleasant inquiry.

"I was going to say, I wish there might be a Westover correspondent,
to put in just a word or two, sometimes; but then I was afraid that
would be impertinent. When a fellow has only eight weeks in the year
of living, Mrs. Holabird, and all the rest is drill, you don't know
how he hangs on to those eight weeks,--and how they hang on to him
afterwards."

Mother looked so motherly at him then!

"We shall not forg