Belinda looked aghast, and her round face seemed longer than one could have believed possible.

“Randy Weston!” she ejaculated, “if you’re planning to work like that the whole duration time you won’t have a single minute for fun, and how we’ll miss you!”

“Oh, don’t imagine that I shall lose all the winter’s pleasures, Belinda,” Randy answered slipping her arm about her friend’s waist.  “I can study in the long evenings and I think that I shall be able to join you all in the ‘good times’ which you plan and yet be able to do the extra work at school.”

“Well, I wish you joy,” said Belinda, “but I, for one, get all the school work I want in a year as it is, and as to extra work, I guess I’ll get it fast enough this winter, although it won’t be lessons I’ll be attending to in my spare time.

“Ma got a letter last night when she rode over to the Centre, and Aunt Drusilla writes that she’s coming to make us a three months’ visit, and she’s going to bring little Hi with her.  And yesterday morning pa said that Grandma Babson was a coming to make her home with us, so you might guess, Randy, that Jemima and I’ll have to step lively and help ma a bit.”

“You will indeed have to help,” Randy answered, “but won’t it be fun to see little Hi again?

“Do you remember, Belinda, when he was here last summer, he tried to harness the hens and wondered why they didn’t like it?”

“I had forgotten that,” said Belinda, “but Jemima reminded me this morning of the day that pa lost his spectacles.  Every one in the house hunted for those glasses, and at last Jemima ran out into the door-yard, and there was little Hi with the spectacles on his nose, a peering into the rain water barrel and holding onto those specs to keep them from tumbling off into the water.  He said that pa said there were critters in any water, and as he couldn’t see ’em he ran off with the glasses to see if they would help him.  He tied our old Tom to the mouse trap because he said that he wanted the cat to be on hand when the mice ran in.  He carried a squash pie out to the brindle cow because he thought she must be tired of eating nothing but grass, and if he and Grandma Babson have got to spend three months under the same roof, I b’lieve he’ll drive her crazy, for she hates boys and don’t mind saying so, and he can think of more mischief in one day than any other child could in a week.”

Both girls laughed as they thought of little Hi’s pranks and Randy said, with a bright twinkle in her eyes,

“At least, you and Jemima will be amused this winter.”

“I guess we shall be in more ways than one,” assented Belinda, “for I’m pretty sure that Grandma Babson and that small boy will be enemies from the start.”

Belinda’s habitually jolly face wore such a comical look of anxiety that Randy refrained from laughing, and to change the subject asked for a schoolmate whom she had not recently seen.  “Where is Molly Wilson?” she questioned.