CHAPTER XIX
The Unexpected Letter
THE next morning, Jean, with three large bananas as a peace offering, was the first to arrive at Dandelion Cottage. Jean, a wise young person for her years, had decided that a little hard work would clear the atmosphere, so, finding no one else in the house, she made a fire in the stove, put on the kettle, put up the leaf of the kitchen table and began to take all the dishes from the pantry shelves. Dishwashing in the cottage was always far more enjoyable than this despised occupation usually is elsewhere, owing to the astonishing assortment of crockery the girls had accumulated. No two of the dishes, with the exception of a pair of plates bearing life-sized portraits of "The frog that would a-wooing go, whether his mother would let him or no," bore the
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