it."

"You don't need to go and get mad! You told me to."

"Yes, and I just now told you not to!"

"I guess you'd say King's excuse every time if I'd let you. A lot of
good it's going to do, if you sneak out of it whenever you want to."

"I don't sneak out of it--this is the very first time, and you know it!"

"I don't know any such thing, but I don't think it's very good manners
to be telling your guests they're saying something that isn't so! The
day before they're going home, too!" Katy forgot the dignity of her
fifteen years.

"Well, I think it's quite as good manners as to tell your friends
they're sneaks!" Jane's tone was icy.

Gertie came between the belligerents. "Please don't quarrel, girls. It'd
be dreadful the very last day, after we have had such a beautiful
summer. I never did have such a good time in all my life. I most wish I
could live on a ranch always."

"I shouldn't like to live on a ranch, but we have had a jolly time,
Chicken Little," Katy recovered herself enough to say graciously.

Chicken Little was not to be outdone. "I suppose I was ugly, Katy. It
always makes me cross to sew. I wish nobody had ever invented needles. O
dear, I shall be as lonesome as pie when you are gone. It isn't much fun
being the only girl on the ranch, I tell you. Sometimes, I don't even
see another girl for weeks."

"But your school begins soon, doesn't it?"

"Yes, and I'll have Sherm. I just don't believe I could bear to have
Ernest go if Sherm wasn't going to stay."

"I'm awful glad Mr. Lenox put off coming for another day so we can go on
the same train with Ernest." Katy had been exulting over this for the
past twenty-four hours.

"Ernest will be on the train for three days. I feel as if he would be as
far away as if he were going to China."

Their conversation was interrupted by Mrs. Morton's entrance.

"Would you rather have chocolate or cocoanut cake for your lunch, girls?
Annie has killed three chickens, and I thought you could take a basket
of those big yellow peaches; I only wish I could send some to your
mother. And I'll put in cheese and cold-boiled ham and a glass of
current jelly. Mr. Lenox may want to get a meal or two at the stations,
but you are so hurried at these--and it's always well to have plenty of
lunch in traveling. Dr. Morton told Ernest that he'd better get all his
breakfasts at the eating houses to have something hot. And by the third
day his lunch will be too stale--even if t