"Miss Robin French said she couldn't go on some
trip the other day because there was no chaperone; and if a lady with
a mole on her chin and nearly forty has to have a chaperone, I guess
you all will. Please don't stay long, Cousin Claudia. If you don't
want to see mother, Uncle Winthrop, I'll talk to you, for after
dinner I will have to go right straight to bed, being a
brought-up-on-a-book child, and then you and Cousin Claudia will be
all by yourselves. Maybe if you asked mother, though, she might let
me sit up just this once. Shall I go and tell her you say so?"
Laine held the curtains for Claudia to pass out. "We wouldn't be so
cruel as to keep her up, would we?" he asked, and smiled in the eyes
turned quickly from his. "You will not be gone long, and you won't
change your dress?"
"I will be back in time for dinner--and I won't change my dress.
Tell Dorothea about the birds we saw this afternoon."
During the hour that passed before Claudia came back Dorothea had a
chance that seldom came for uninterrupted conversation, and that her
uncle said little was not noticed for some time. Presently she
looked up,
"I don't believe you've opened your lips since Cousin Claudia went
up-stairs," she said. "I don't wonder you don't know where you went
this afternoon if you didn't see any more than you're hearing now.
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