Page:Anna Chapin--Half a dozen boys.djvu/203

Rh

, cousin Bess,” said Rob, coming into the library one evening, “why weren’t you at church last night?”

“Father and mother went to Boston Saturday afternoon, to stay till Wednesday, and it was going to be rather dismal for Fred to stay  alone here, so we spent the evening reading,”  answered Bess, moving to let Rob perch himself on the arm of her great easy-chair.

“I tried to make her go, but she just wouldn’t,” remarked Fred, in a remorseful  parenthesis.

“Well, you’d better have been there, both of you,” responded Rob, as he slyly drew a long  shell pin from his cousin’s hair, and tucked it  into his side pocket. “Do you remember that friend of Mr. Washburn that sang here one  night in January, that New York tenor? He was here again last night, and sang splendidly.