P.S.  Saturday morning.  I feel better about that Poll Parroting of mine, to-day.  I have had another talk with Dakie.  I don’t believe he will write; now, at any rate.  O girls! this is just the most perfect morning!

Tell Stephen I’ve got a splendid little idea, on purpose for him and me.  Something I can hardly keep to myself till I get home.  Dakie Thayne put it into my head.  He is just the brightest boy, about everything!  I begin to feel in a hurry almost, to come back.  I don’t think Miss Pennington will go to Lake George, after all.  She says she hates to leave the Point, so many of her old friends are here.  But Pen and I think she is afraid of the steamers.

* * * * *

Ruth got home a week after this; a little fatter, a little browner, and a little merrier and more talkative than she had ever been before.

Stephen was in a great hurry about the splendid little mysterious idea, of course.  Boys never can wait, half so well as girls, for anything.

We were all out on the balcony that night before dusk, as usual.  Ruth got up suddenly, and went into the house for something.  Stephen went straight in after her.  What happened upon that, the rest of us did not know till afterward.  But it is a nice little part of the story,—­just because there is so precious little of it.

Ruth went round, through the brown room and the hall, to the front door.  Stephen found her stooping down, with her face close to the piazza cracks.

“Hollo! what’s the matter?  Lost something?”

Ruth lifted up her head.  “Hush!”

“Why, how your face shines!  What is up?”

“It’s the sunset.  I mean—­that shines.  Don’t say anything.  Our splendid—­little—­idea, you know.  It’s under here.”

“Be dar—­never-minded, if mine is!”

“You don’t know.  Columbus didn’t know where his idea was—­exactly.  Do you remember when Sphinx hid her kittens under here last summer?  Brought ’em round, over the wood-pile in the shed, and they never knew their way out till she showed ’em?”

“It isn’t about kittens!”

“Hasn’t Old Ma’amselle got some now?”

“Yes; four.”

“Couldn’t you bring up one—­or two—­to-morrow morning early, and make a place and tuck ’em in here, under the step, and put back the sod, and fasten ’em up?”

“What—­for?” with wild amazement.

“I can’t do what I want to, just for an idea.  It will make a noise, and I don’t feel sure enough.  There had better be a kitten.  I’ll tell you the rest to-morrow morning.”  And Ruth was up on her two little feet, and had given Stephen a kiss, and was back into the house, and round again to the balcony, before he could say another word.

Boys like a plan, though; especially a mysterious getting-up-early plan; and if it has cats in it, it is always funny.  He made up his mind to be on hand.