Page:Leah Reed--Brenda's summer at Rockley.djvu/308

290 Julia’s; but they ’ve gone out West, her mother and she, and they won’t be back until the end of September.”

“She must be very sorry to miss it.”

“Oh, yes, indeed; but we ’ll have a large party, and we can have a fine time. I’m sending special invitations to about twenty girls whom I know very well, who are here  along the Shore. I’m awfully glad that you are to be one of us; we don’t have a wedding in the family every  year, and so we are to make the most of this.”

So Brenda rattled on, and Amy, listening, had only one regret,—she wished that Fritz might have been among  the guests, and she felt as if she ought not to take so  much pleasure in the prospect, when she and her friend  were likely to be thus separated; it would have meant so  much to Fritz to have been included in the festivities. But it was natural, she thought, that neither Mrs. Barlow nor Brenda should have invited him. Old Mr. Tomkins, his uncle, led so retired a life, that he was never thought  of in the social affairs of his neighbors.

“After all,” said Amy to her mother, “a house without a woman is rather stupid. I don’t wonder that Fritz is always trying to get away.”