"I'm sorry you've had so much trouble, Miss Nita," said Polly plaintively.

The little woman smiled. "I ought not to have said that. I'm better, you know! How are we to get up to Foxford?"

"Oh, in automobiles! Didn't I tell you? Colonel Gresham will let us have two, and Mrs. Illingworth one, and father ours. I don't know how many will go from here, but there'll be David and Leonora and Patricia and me, besides the Colonel and the chauffeurs. You don't think but that Miss Sniffen will let them all go, do you?"

Polly added anxiously.

"Perhaps." Miss Sterling mused over it. "I can't tell; I've lost the map of Miss Sniffen's mind."

"Did you ever have it?" laughed Polly.

"I think once I had a facsimile of it."

Polly chuckled. Then she shook her head doubtfully. "I wish Miss Sniffen--wasn't Miss Sniffen," she mused vaguely. Suddenly she brightened. "Why can't we tell Mr. Randolph about it and ask him to ask Miss Sniffen?" She waited eagerly for the answer. It was not quick to come.

Miss Sterling bent her head in thought, while the color fluttered on her cheeks.

"I'm afraid it wouldn't be best," she said finally with a deep breath. "He might--"

"Oh, bother!" Polly broke in; "I was so sure that was a brilliant thought of mine! And now you turn it down just like any common idea!"

"My dear child, it isn't that the idea is not brilliant, but it seems to me it would be--would be--just a little out of place!"

"It wouldn't be--a single bit!" insisted Polly. "Isn't he the president of the Home?"

"Yes; but he isn't in this, and wouldn't it look as if we were ignoring Miss Sniffen?"

"Maybe it would," a.s.sented Polly submissively. "I hadn't thought of that."

"You have said nothing to Miss Lily about it?"

"Oh, no!" Polly replied. "We've only talked it over at home and with the Greshams."

"I suppose I'll have to parley with the Powers," smiled Miss Sterling ruefully.

"I don't want to!" Polly frowned. She thought a moment, tapping her teeth with her thumb. "Oh, I know!" she burst out joyously.

"You can't object to this! Colonel Gresham's the one to do it--because he's going, too. He'll drive his big car. I thought it wouldn't do to have father, for she'd think I got him to do it.

But Colonel Gresham would win anybody if he tried."

Miss Sterling nodded approvingly.

"Aren't you glad I thought of it?"

"It looks the best thing."

"It is! Guess I'll go and ask the folks now! Will you come?"

"No, thank you! Run on alone--you'll do it best without any a.s.sistance."

Polly laughed happily. She was too excited to insist on even Miss Nita's company.

It was a good hour before she returned, having been rapturously welcomed upstairs and down and kept as long as possible.

"Everybody is delighted with the idea!" Polly dropped to the ha.s.sock at Miss Sterling's knee. "They're all going--if they can!--except Mrs. Post and Mrs. Prindle. Mrs. Post has had a pull-back and she can't walk at all, and Mrs. Prindle's cold is worse. I think the rest will just fill the cars."

She counted up, and found seats and occupants to agree.

"I'm wondering whether to have Mrs. Adlerfeld or Miss Lily sit with Colonel Gresham--which would you?" Polly was all alight with her planning.

"The Colonel would enjoy Mrs. Adlerfeld best. Miss Lily would be too shy to say anything."

"So she would! I only thought of her because she's the birthday girl. Oh! You can't imagine how surprised she was--I thought she'd better know it right away, and not try to be secret about it."

Miss Sterling smiled a.s.sent.

"She looked as if she were going to cry," Polly went on; "but then I said something funny, and she laughed. I could see she was wonderfully pleased that Doodles should propose it. I'm glad he did, for I guess she doesn't have very much to make her happy.

"Oh, I forgot! What do you think Mrs. Adlerfeld calls it? I happened to say we thought it was so nice it came when the moon was full, and she said, 'Thank you, I shall be so glad and happy to go!

I am very fond about moonshine nights!' Isn't that just lovely?

I'm going to call it a 'moonshine' party! It is ever so much prettier than 'moonlight.' Won't Colonel Gresham be pleased to have Mrs. Adlerfeld sit with him!"

CHAPTER XX

THE PARTY ITSELF

The weedy roadside was a witching tangle of shadows, and the air was drowsy with spicy, wind-blown scents, as four motor cars swept on their merry way to Foxford.

Juanita Sterling, in the last of the procession, watched the gay little imps dance across the windshield and thought glad thoughts.

It was going to be a worth-while evening she felt sure, and it was good that her left-hand neighbors, Miss Major and Mrs. Winslow Teed, had each other to entertain, and she was free to antic.i.p.ate and ponder and to feast her heart on the visions of the night.

The sometimes insisting opinions of Miss Major and the familiar "When I was abroad" of Mrs. Winslow Teed seldom obtruded on her dreams. Once, however, she came to her surroundings with a start.

"No," Miss Major was a.s.serting, "Nelson Randolph is not the man for the place. He takes some things for granted and lets other things drift. If we had a good, live president, our superintendent would get her walking ticket instanter."

"A little strange he doesn't marry again. His wife has been gone for some years, hasn't she?"

"Five last June. They say he is devoted to her memory. I don't take much stock in such devotedness--so far as men are concerned.

When he finds some pink and white doll that is sufficiently captivating he will go through with another wedding ceremony."

"That makes me think of a Danish couple I met in Florence," began Mrs. Winslow Teed; "she couldn't have been over nineteen or twenty, and he was eighty at least. She--"

Miss Sterling was again absorbed in her own thoughts and never heard what became of the poorly-mated travelers.

Doodles and Blue ran down from the veranda as the cars speeded up the slope to the little bungalow, and they were quickly in the midst of a joyous circle.

Polly and David, alighting from the third car, ran back to help Miss Sterling and the others.