At her exclamation the girls crowded round her eagerly.  She hastily tore open the envelope and devoured the contents.  Then she turned to the girls with a glowing face.

“It’s all right, it’s all right!” she cried, waving the letter round her head like a flag and nearly upsetting her chums.  “Uncle John says it is settled.  He is going to Canada for a couple of months and we can have the lodge for the whole time he is away or a part of it, just as we wish.  Hooray!  How’s that for luck?”

The girls were so excited over their good fortune that they forgot all about Dodo.  She, finding herself unobserved, had slipped around the girls to the swing, snatched the box of candy which Grace had exposed when she got up, had taken the steps two at a time and was flying off down the street before the girls saw what she was up to.

Then it was Grace who, with a dreadful premonition, thought of her candy.  She turned quickly, saw that the box was gone, and uttered a wail of woe.

“That little Turk of a sister of yours has done it again,” she cried, turning to Mollie, while Betty and Amy began to laugh.  “You just wait till I catch her.  I’ll get my candy back if I have to—­ spank her,” this last with a fierce scowl.

Betty put an arm about her excited chum, led her over to the swing and put her down in it.

“By the time you caught Dodo there wouldn’t be any of your candy left,” she said, adding soothingly:  “Never mind, honey.  We will get you some more if we have to take up a collection.”

“Makes me feel like an orphan’s home,” grumbled Grace, but she laughed nevertheless with the rest and immediately forgot both her candy and Dodo in renewed excitement over Wild Rose Lodge.

“Just where is this place, Mollie?” asked Amy.  “What is it called?”

“Oh, that’s the very best part of it,” said Mollie, with a mysterious smile.  “It has the most wonderful, most romantic name.  Come closer while I whisper it—­ Moonlight Falls.  There, isn’t that a real name for a place?”

“Wild Rose Lodge at Moonlight Falls,” sighed Grace ecstatically.  “If we don’t have a wildly romantic time in a place with a name like that, it will be our own fault.”

“But we will have to have a chaperon—­” Amy was beginning when Betty interrupted her eagerly.

“I have fixed that,” she said, and while they all looked in astonishment she went on quickly to explain.  “I met Mrs. Irving in the street the other day—­ you know she has been away ever since that last time she was with us on Pine Island—­ and I asked her then if she would chaperon us this summer.”

“But you didn’t even know then that we were going to Wild Rose Lodge, Betty,” Mollie interrupted.

“I knew we were sure to go somewhere.  We always—­” Betty was arguing when Grace cut in impatiently.

“Never mind about that,” she said.  “Did Mrs. Irving say she would go?”