“And struck up an intimate friendship at once,” burst in Kitty, laughing.

“No, for this was some weeks ago, and she’s only just asked me to set the day when I could come.  Oh, Kitty, you may make fun all you like; but she is a very interesting girl,—­my mother thinks she is too.”

“Oh, you’ve introduced her to your mother, have you?”

“I have told mamma about her, and I brought her in one afternoon to see the pictures,—­she’s very fond of pictures,—­and mamma asked her to stay to luncheon, but she couldn’t.”

“And now it is you who are going to make the first visit, going to sunsets and tea on McVane Street!”

“Laura!  Laura!” called a voice here; and Laura looked up, to see her brother Jack in his T-cart pulling up at the curbstone.  The next minute she was whirling off with him, bowing good-by to Kitty; and Kitty was calling after her mischievously,—­

“Laura, Laura, tell your brother you are going to take tea with a girl who lives on McVane Street!”

CHAPTER II.

The spirited horse that young Jack Brooks drove held his attention so completely at that moment that he had no time to bestow upon anything else; but when he was well out on the broad, clear roadway of the “Neck,” he turned to his sister, and asked, “What did Kitty Grant; mean by your going to take tea with a girl who lives on McVane Street?”

“It is one of the girls at Miss Milwood’s school,—­Esther Bodn.”

“How does a girl who lives on McVane Street come to go to Miss Milwood’s school?”

“She assists Miss Milwood.”  And Laura told what she knew of Esther’s assistance in the way of the French and German.

“Oh!” and the young man gave a satisfied sort of nod as he uttered this, as much as to say, “That explains it;” and then, dismissing the subject from his mind, turned his whole attention again to his horse, while Laura drew a deep breath of relief.  She had begun to think that if her brother were to take up Kitty’s cry against McVane Street, she might find her anticipated visit set about with thorns.  “But I shall go, I shall go!” she said to herself, “whatever Jack may say, when mamma says that I may.”

But Jack said no more on that occasion, nor when his mother, the next day at luncheon, asked Laura what time Miss Bodn expected her, did the young gentleman make any remark.  He had evidently forgotten the matter altogether; and Laura, without further anxiety, set out upon her little journey to McVane Street.

Kitty Grant had laughed that morning when Laura had told her that she was to go to Esther’s at four o’clock and leave at six, that she might be in time for her own dinner hour,—­had laughed and said, “Oh, a regular ’four-to-six,’—­a sunset tea!  The little Bodn is ‘up’ on ‘sassiety’ matters, isn’t she?  Dear me, I wish I could go with you,—­I never went to a sunset tea.  Couldn’t you take me along?”