Page:Anna Chapin--Half a dozen boys.djvu/247

Rh other and leave us more time. Rob has never been here, and I am quite curious to see your other charge. Do hurry to come, for I am impatient to see you. I should think you might start by the first of next week.

Jack wishes me to enclose these tickets for the journey, as a last inducement. He says I am to tell you that they will be wasted unless you use them, and that  will be sure to bring you, as your frugal soul cannot bear  to waste anything.

I won’t say any more, for you will be here so soon; and then how we will talk! .

This was the letter which had caused a sensation in the Carter household. Alice Carter, ten years older than Bess, had married  a wealthy New York banker, and was now the  mother of two little girls. “Island Den,” their luxurious summer home, was on one of the  Thousand Islands, whither for years they had  gone to spend the months of July and August,  and keep open house for their friends.

It was now three years since Bess had been able to accept her annual invitation to go there,  for it was an expensive little trip, and of late  some treacherous Western loans had decidedly