To the playroom they went, and Kingdon carefully cut small locks from the kitten, the doll, and the bear, and Marjorie neatly tied them with narrow blue ribbons.  These mementoes the girls put away, and carefully treasured all through the summer.

Another Maynard custom was a farewell feast at dinner, the night before vacation began.  Ordinarily, only the two older children dined with their parents, the other two having their tea in the nursery.  But on this occasion, all were allowed at dinner, and the feast was made a special honor for the one who was going away.  Gifts were made, as on a birthday, and festival dress was in order.

A little later, then, the four children presented themselves in the library, where their parents awaited them.

Mr. Maynard was a man of merry disposition and rollicking nature, and sometimes joined so heartily in the children’s play that he seemed scarcely older than they.

Mrs. Maynard was more sedate, and was a loving mother, though not at all a fussy one.  She was glad in many ways to have one of her children spend the summer each year with her mother, but it always saddened her when the time of departure came.

She put her arm around Marjorie, without a word, as the girl came into the room, for it had been three years since the two had been parted, and Mrs. Maynard felt a little sad at the thought of separation.

“Don’t look like that, Mother,” said Marjorie, “for if you do, I’ll begin to feel weepy, and I won’t go at all.”

“Oh, yes, you will, Miss Midge,” cried her father; “you’ll go, and you’ll stay all summer, and you’ll have a perfectly beautiful time.  And, then, the first of September I’ll come flying up there to get you, and bring you home, and it’ll be all over.  Now, such a short vacation as that isn’t worth worrying about, is it?”

“No,” put in Kingdon, “and last year when I went there wasn’t any sad good-by.”

“That’s because you’re a boy,” said his mother, smiling at him proudly; “tearful good-bys are only for girls and women.”

“Yes,” said Mr. Maynard, “they enjoy them, you know.  Now, I think it is an occasion of rejoicing that Marjorie is to go to Grandma’s and have a happy, jolly vacation.  We can all write letters to her, and she will write a big budget of a family letter that we can all enjoy together.”

“And Mopsy must wite me a little letter, all for my own sef,” remarked Rosy Posy, “’cause I like to get letters all to me.”

Baby Rosamond was dressed up for the occasion in a very frilly white frock, and being much impressed by the grandeur of staying up to dinner, she had solemnly seated herself in state on a big sofa, holding Boffin Bear in her arms.  Her words, therefore, seemed to have more weight than when she was her everyday roly-poly self, tumbling about on the floor, and Marjorie at once promised that she should have some letters all to herself.