They walked on a short way in silence.  “But you must remember, Katharine, that was seventy years ago.  Grandma Parlin wouldn’t advise a girl of fourteen to do in these days as she did then.  Schools are very different now.”

“Yes, indeed, mamma, very, very different.  Isn’t it too bad?  I’d like to ’board ‘round’ the way grandma did, and rap on the window with a ferule, and ‘choose sides’ and all that!  But there’s one thing I could do!” exclaimed the little girl, brightening.  “I could make the children ’toe the mark’; wouldn’t that be fun?  I mean stand in a line on a crack in the floor.  How grandma would laugh!  I’ll write her all about it, and send her a photograph, bare feet and all.”

In her eagerness Kyzie spoke as if the matter were all arranged and she could almost see the children “toeing the mark.”

“Not so fast, my daughter.  Remember there are three points to be settled before we can discuss the matter seriously.  First, would your papa consent?  Second, would your mamma consent?  Third, do the people of Castle Cliff want a summer school anyway?”

“Three points?  I see, oh, yes,” said Kyzie, meekly.

“But now, Katharine, let us walk a little faster and join the others.  And not a word more of this to-day.”

“What did keep you two so long?” asked Edith, coming to meet them with a bright face.  If her happy thoughts had not been dwelling on the zebra cat just presented her by the “knitting-woman,” she would have observed at once that mamma and Kyzie had been “talking secrets”; though she might not have suspected that this had anything to do with the vacation school.

“Do hurry along,” she added.  “I want to show you the funniest sight!  I don’t believe you’ve seen Barbara Hale, have you?”

Edith could hardly speak for laughing; and her mother and Kyzie did not wonder when they beheld the figure that little Bab had made of herself, by a new style of dressing her hair.  The two little girls were, as I have told you, as different as possible, but had an intense desire to look “just alike”; and when they tried their best the result was very funny.

I will mention here that Lucy “despised” her own hair for not being straight like Bab’s, and had often tried to braid it down her back; but as the braid always came out and the ribbon came off, the attempt had been forbidden.

Now, however, as the children had left their city home and come to a place where everybody was “on holiday,” the mammas decided that they might have a little more liberty.

Their dresses were off the same piece,—­good, strong brown ones; their hats were alike; and, as for their hair, they were allowed to wear it as they pleased “just for this summer.”

“We’ll look exactly alike up there in the mountains,” the little souls had said to each other; and this was perhaps one reason why they had been so overjoyed at the prospect of going.