“Oh, Miss Mercer, what do we have to do this morning?” shouted Dolly as soon as she saw Bessie and the Guardian.

“What you like until after lunch, Dolly.  Then perhaps we may want to arrange to do something all together—­have a cooking lesson, or learn something about the farm.  We’ll see.  But you and Bessie might as well go over the place now and get acquainted with it.  Bessie can probably find her way about easier than you city girls.”

“Oh, I’m so glad!” cried Dolly.  “Come on, Bessie!  I bet we can have lots of sport.”

So they went off, and, though Bessie wanted to see the great barn in which the horses were kept, Dolly wanted to go toward the road at the entrance of the place, and Bessie yielded, since the choice of direction didn’t seem a bit important then.

“I saw one of those boys who drove us up last night going off this way,” Dolly explained, guilelessly, “and, Bessie, he looked ever so much nicer in his blue overalls than he did in that horrible, stiff, black suit he was wearing last night.”

“You shouldn’t laugh at his clothes.  They’re his very best, Dolly.  The overalls are just his working clothes, and you’d hurt his feelings terribly if he knew that you were laughing at the store clothes.  He probably had to save up his money for a long time to buy them.”

“Oh, well, I don’t care!  I wonder if there’s any place around here where you can buy ice-cream soda?  I’m just dying to have some.”

“I thought you were going without soda and candy for a month to get an honor bead, Dolly.”

“Oh, bother!  I was, but it was too hard.  I got a soda when I’d gone without for two weeks, and I never thought of the old honor bead until I’d begun to drink it.  So that discouraged me, and I gave it up.”

“But don’t you feel much better when you don’t eat candy and drink sodas between meals?”

“I don’t know—­maybe I do.  Yes, I guess I do.  But they taste so good, Bessie!”

“Well, I’m afraid you’ll have to do without the soda here.”

Dolly was still really leading the way, and now, her eyes on a blue clad figure, she decided to leave the avenue of trees that led to the road and cut across a field.

“Don’t you love the smell of hay, Bessie?” asked Dolly.  “I think it’s fine.  That’s one of the things I like best about the country, and being on a farm.”

“I guess I know it too well to get excited about it, Dolly.  You see, I’ve lived on a farm almost all my life, and so things like that aren’t new to me.  But it is lovely and, yes, I do believe I’ve missed it, there in the city.”

“Wouldn’t you rather live in the city, though?”

“Yes, because I wasn’t happy where I was in the country, and in the city I’ve had everything to make me happy.  I suppose you’d rather live in the country, though?”

“No, indeed!  I like to hear the city noises at night, and to see all the people.  And I like to go to the theatre, when my aunt lets me go to a matinee, and to the moving picture shows, and everything like that.  Don’t you love the movies?”