Page:Anna Chapin--Half a dozen boys.djvu/251

Rh sleeper. Rob, in a light summer suit, armed with a jointed fishing-pole and his tennis  racket, his mother’s compromise in the affair of  the trunk, led the way into the car. Mr. Carter followed with a lunch basket of noble proportions, for experience had taught Bessie that boy appetites are unfailing, and, on Fred’s account, she dared not depend on railway dining-rooms. Bess, with Fred, brought up the rear of the procession. Rob was bubbling over with fun and nonsense, so that Fred caught his spirit  and answered jest with jest. As Mr. Carter left them, Bess turned and surveyed her charges with a feeling of almost maternal pride. Two more bonnie boys it would have been hard to find that day.

“I wonder if I look like their mother, or what people think I am,” she thought, as she looked from the quiet boy at her side to the lively one opposite her. “I don’t care very much— Oh, Rob, be careful,” she exclaimed aloud, as that youth, in changing the position of his fishing-pole, recklessly battered the rear of the respectable black bonnet worn by an old  woman in front of him.