Found Treasure (Musaicum Romance Classics). Grace Livingston Hill

      CHAPTER I

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      The younger set was meeting in Ethel Garner’s summerhouse to make plans for an automobile ride and an all-day picnic that was arranged for the next week.

      They fluttered in by ones and twos in their little bright dresses, looking like a lot of dressy dolls on the Garner lawn. They hovered about awaiting a few more arrivals, chattering like a flock of birds just alighted.

      “Oh Ethel!” screamed her special chum Janet Chipley, “isn’t that a darling new dress! Did your mother make it or did you get it in the city?”

      “This?” said Ethel, with a conscious look at the dainty little blue-and-white voile she was wearing. “Oh, it’s a little imported frock Mother picked up. It is rather good, isn’t it?”

      “Imported!” exclaimed Maud Bradley, dashing into the conversation with gusto. “My goodness! They don’t import cotton dresses do they? Aren’t you stylish, wearing imported dresses in the afternoon. Say, Ethel, you look precious in it, though, don’t you? That’s a pastel shade of blue, isn’t it? You ought to save it for the ride. It’s awfully attractive. Jessie Heath said she was getting a new dress, too. Her mother ordered it in New York from that great dressmaker she goes to every spring. It’s some kind of pink they’re wearing in Paris. But I’m sure it won’t be any prettier than yours.”

      “You’ve got a pretty dress, too, Maud,” said Ethel, somewhat patronizingly. “Did you make it yourself?”

      “Yes,” said Maud with a grimace, “sat up till after midnight last night to finish the hemstitching.”

      “Aren’t you clever. You don’t mean to say you did all this hemstitching? Why, it looks just like the imported things. I think you are simply great to be able to do it.”

      “Oh, that’s nothing,” said Maud. “I’d much rather do it than study Latin. You know I flunked the exam this year. I get more and more disgusted with it. Say, girls, what do you think? I heard Miss House wasn’t going to teach Latin next year. Wouldn’t that be great? I’d almost be willing to go back to school another year, just to be rid of her. My, she was a pain! How anybody could get like that puzzles me. But isn’t it great that we’re done with high school? You couldn’t drag me to college. Emily Morehouse says she’s going, and Reitha Kent. But they always were grinds.”

      “Well, I’m going,” said Ethel with satisfaction.

      “You’re going!” screamed her friend in dismay. “Why, I thought you said you weren’t.”

      “Well, so I did, but Mother has persuaded me. She says she wants me to get the atmosphere! And you really aren’t anywhere if you haven’t been to college these days.”

      “Mercy,” said Janet. “Then I suppose I’ll have to go, too. I only begged off by telling Dad and Mother you weren’t going.”

      “Oh, come on, Jan, of course you’ll go. I couldn’t leave you behind. And besides, we’ll have heaps of fun.”

      “But we aren’t signed up anywhere.”

      “Yes we are; that is, I am. I know Dad can get you in at my college. He’s something on the board. Get your father and mother to come over to-night and talk it over with Dad. He’ll fix it. There comes Gladys Harper. Come on, girls, let’s go back to the summerhouse. The rest will know where to find us, and it’s too hot to stay here in the sun. Was that the phone, Flora?” called Ethel as her younger sister came out on the porch. “Who called? I hope nobody is staying away.”

      “It was Eleanor Martin. She can’t come till half past four. They’ve got the dressmaker there and she has to be fitted.”

      “I know,” said Ethel. “Come on, we’re going around to the summerhouse. I wonder what she had to telephone for. She told me that this morning.”

      Flora, in her bright pink organdy, followed the girls around to the summerhouse.

      “Why, it was about Effie,” she admitted with a troubled look as they drifted into the big rustic arbor against its background of tall privet hedge and settled down among the cushions with which it was amply furnished. “You know Effie Martin wants to go with us on the picnic. Eleanor is taking their big new car, and Effie wants to drive it part of the time. She asked me to get her an invitation. But Eleanor has found it out, and she doesn’t want her to go.”

      “The very idea!” said Janet Chipley sharply. “Why, that would be ridiculous. Why, she doesn’t belong to our crowd at all.”

      “Well, she evidently wants to,” said Flora with a troubled sigh, “and I promised her I’d do my best to get her an invitation. She’s simply wild to go. And it’s really the first time she’s ever seemed to care much. What could I do but promise?”

      “Well, she’s not going to get any invitation if I’m on the committee,” announced Maud Bradley. “I’ll tell you that! Why, she’s unbearable. Nobody else would want to go if she went, that’s certain. Just tell her we had our list all made up and there wasn’t room, Flora.”

      “But she’d say she could ride on the running board,” said Flora, still troubled. Flora did not like to be unkind.

      “Yes, that’s