ADELE DORING OF THE SUNNYSIDE CLUB

“Suppose we have a club.”

CHAPTER ONE THE SUNNYSIDE CLUB

There was spring in the air, Though the woods were still bare. There was fragrance all about, Though not a flower was out. There were seven girls so gay Off for a holiday.

Across the April meadows they danced, a long row, hand in hand. Another month and the brown fields would be gold-and-white with daisies and buttercups.

“Look! Look! The pussy-willows are out!” Adele Doring called, as, with a shout of glee, she darted ahead of the rest, toward a bush which grew close to a low stone wall and not far from a sparkling brook.

When the others came up, they caught hold of hands and danced about the bush while Adele sang:

“‘Little Pussy-willow, harbinger of spring, We are glad to welcome you, such good news you bring.’”

“Adele,” drawled Rosamond Wright when they had paused for breath, “I’m powerful worried about you, for fear you are going to grow up to be a poet or something queer like that.”

Adele laughed as she perched on the low stone wall and fanned herself with her broad-brimmed hat.

“No fear of my being a poet!” exclaimed Doris Drexel, as she and the other girls sat down on the warm brown grass. “Why I couldn’t even make ‘curl’ rhyme with ‘girl’ without being prompted.”

Then Adele, having put her hand in the pocket of her rose-colored sweater-coat, gave a sudden exclamation as she drew out a piece of folded paper.

“Girls!” she cried. “Lend me your ears! I have a secret plan to reveal.”

“Aha!” quoth Bertha Angel. “So you had a sinister motive, as Bob says, for bringing us to this lonely, forsaken spot.”

“You were wise to do so, if it’s a secret,” Rosie declared, “for even the walls have ears.”

“Well, if this old stone wall wants to hear what I have to say,” laughed Adele, “it may listen and welcome.”

“Do hurry and tell us!” cried the impatient Betty Burd. “Your plans are always such jolly fun.”

“Well, then,” said Adele, mysteriously, “I’ve been reading a book.”

“But there is nothing remarkable about that,” Doris Drexel exclaimed. “You are almost always reading a book.”

Adele, not heeding the interruption, continued: “And in this book dwell several maidens of about our own age. They belong to a secret society and they have the best times ever. Now my plan is this. Since we seven girls are continually together, suppose we have a club.”

“Wouldn’t that be fun, though!” exclaimed Peggy Pierce. “I’ve always wanted to belong to one.”

“I choose to be treasurer!” declared Betty Burd mischievously.

“Oh, Betty, you treasurer!” cried Doris Drexel in mock horror. “Then we never would know how our funds stood.”

“Don’t you have enough of mathematics in school, little one?” Adele asked with twinkling eyes.

“Don’t I, though! Oh, girls!” Betty exclaimed dismally. “I just know that you are all thinking of yesterday. Wasn’t it terrible when I was at the board doing that problem and those visiting ladies came in and said that they were interested in watching the progress made by the young. I was so scared that every figure looked like a Chinese character to me, and how I did wish that a trap-door would open under my feet and let me gently down into the cellar. Luckily, Miss Donovan had no desire to be disgraced, and so she bade me take my seat and let Bertha do the problem.”

“I hate math., too,” Doris Drexel declared. “I’m like the little boy who said he could add the naughts all right but the figures bothered him.”

“In truth,” said Gertrude Willis, “there is just one of us who was born to be the treasurer of this club, and that one is Bertha Angel,—‘the only pupil in Seven B who can add and subtract with unvarying accuracy,’ as Miss Donovan so recently remarked.”

“Good!” cried Adele. “Bertha Angel, you are elected treasurer, but your duties will not be heavy, for at present there is no money to count.”

“I accept the responsibility,” said Bertha brightly, as she sprang up and made a bow.

“Now,” Adele inquired, “who would like to be secretary?”