because the kiddies have been measling, but Ted is here, and Uncle Phil—bless him! He brought the twins over from Dunbury in the car. Phil Lambert and everybody are waiting down the street. Carlotta too! To think you haven't ever met her, when she's been my roommate and best friend for two years! And, oh! Dicky! I haven't seen you myself for most a year and I'm so glad." She beamed up at him as she made this rather ambiguous statement. "And you haven't said a word but just 'hello!' Aren't you glad to see me, Dicky?" she reproached.

He grunted at that.

"About a thousand times gladder than if I were in Heaven, unless you happened to be sitting beside me on the golden stairs. And if you think I don't know how long it is since I've seen you, you are mightily mistaken. It is precisely one million years in round numbers."

"Oh, it is?" Tony smiled, appeased. "Why didn't you say so before, and not leave me to squeeze it out of you like tooth-paste?"

Dick grinned back happily.

"Because you brought me up not to interrupt a lady. You seemed to have the floor, so to speak."

"So to speak, indeed," laughed Tony. "Carlotta says I exist for that sole purpose. But come on. Everybody's crazy to see you and I've a million things to do." And tucking her arm in his, Tony marshaled the procession of two down the stairs to the street where the car and the old Holiday Hill crowd waited to greet the newest comer to the ranks of the commencement celebrants.

With the exception of Carlotta Cressy, Tony's roommate, the occupants of the car are known already to those who followed the earlier tale of Holiday Hill.[1]

[Footnote 1: The earlier experiences of the Holidays and their friends are related in "The House on the Hill."]

First of all there was the owner of the car, Dr. Philip Holiday himself, a married man now, with a small son and daughter of his own, "Miss Margery's" children. A little thicker of build and thinner of hair was the doctor, but possessed of the same genial friendliness of manner and whimsical humor, the same steady hand held out to help wherever and whenever help was needed. He was head of the House of Holiday now for his father, the saintly old pastor, had gone on to other fields and his soldier brother Ned, Tony's father, had also gone, in the prime of life, two years before, victim of typhus, leaving his beloved little daughter, and his two sons just verging into manhood, in the care of the younger Holiday.

As Dick and the doctor exchanged cordial greetings, the latter's friendly eyes challenged the young man's and were answered. Plainly as if words had been spoken the doctor knew that Dick was keeping faith with the old pact, living up to the name the little girl Tony had given him in her impulsive generosity.

"Something not quite right, though," he thought. "The boy isn't all happy. Wonder what the trouble is. Probably a girl. Usually is at that age."

At the wheel beside the doctor was his namesake and neighbor, Philip Lambert. Phil was graduating, himself, this year from the college across the river, a sturdy athlete of some note and a Phi Beta Kappa man as well. Out of a harum-scarum, willful boyhood he had emerged into a finely tempered, steady young manhood. The Dunbury wiseacres who had been wont to shake their heads over Phil's youthful escapades and prophesy a bad end for such a devil-may-care youngster now patted themselves complacently on the back, as wiseacres will, and declared they had always known the boy would turn out a credit to his family and the town.

On the back seat were Phil's sisters, the pretty twins, Charley and Clare, still astonishingly alike at twenty, as they had been at twelve, and still full of the high spirits and ready laughter and wit that had made them the life of the Hill in the old days. Neither looked a day over sixteen, but Clare had already been teaching two years in a Dunbury public school and Charley was to go into nurse's training in the fall.

Larry, the young doctor, as Dunbury had taken to calling him in distinction from his uncle, was not yet arrived, as Tony had explained; but Ted, her younger brother, was very much on the scene, arrayed in all the extravagant niceties of modish attire affected by university undergraduates. At twenty, Ted Holiday was as handsome as the traditional young Greek god and possessed of a godlike propensity to do as he liked and the devil take the consequences. Already Ned Holiday's younger son had acquired something of a reputation as a high flier among his own sex, and a heart breaker among the fairer one. Reckless, debonair, utterly irresponsible, he was still "terrible Teddy" as his father had jocosely dubbed him long ago. Yet he was quite as lovable as he was irrepressible, and had a manifest grace to counterbalance every one of his many faults. His soberer brother Larry worried uselessly over Ted's misdeeds, and took him sharply to task for them; but even Larry admitted that there was something rather magnificent about Ted and that possibly in the end he would come out the soundest Holiday of them all.

There remains only Carlotta to be introduced. Carlotta was lovely to look upon. A poet speaks somewhere of a face "made out of a rose." Carlotta had that kind of a face and her eyes were of that deep, violet shade which works mischief and magic in the hearts of men. As for her hair, it might well have been the envy of any princess, in or out of the covers of a book, so fine spun was it in texture, so pure gold in color, like the warm, vivid shimmer of tropical sunshine. She lifted an inquiring gaze now to Dick, as she held out her hand in acknowledgment of the introduction, and Dick murmured something platitudinous, bowed politely over the hand and never noticed what color her eyes were. A single track mind is both a curse and a protection to a man.

"Carlotta would come," Tony was explaining gaily, "though I told her there wasn't room. Let me inform you all that Carlotta is the most completely, magnificently, delightfully spoiled young person in these United States of America."

"Barring you?" teased her uncle.

"Barring none. By comparison with Carlotta, I am all the noble army of saints, martyrs and seraphim on record combined. Carlotta is preordained to have her own way. Everybody unites to give it to her. We can't help it. She hypnotizes us. Some night you will miss the moon in its accustomed place and you will find that she wanted it for a few moments to play with."

Philip Lambert had turned around in his seat and was surveying Carlotta rather curiously during this teasing tirade of Tony's.

"Oh, well," murmured Carlotta. "Your old moon can be put up again when I am through with it. I shan't do it a bit of harm. Anyway, Mr. Carson must not be told such horrid things about me the very first time he meets me, must he, Phil? He might think they were true." She suddenly lifted her eyes and smiled straight up into the face of the young man on the front seat who was watching her so intently.

"Well, aren't they?" returned the young man addressed, stooping to examine the brake.

Carlotta did not appear in the least offended at his curt comment. Indeed the smile on her lips lingered as if it had some inner reason for being there.

"Hop in, Tony," ordered Ted with brotherly peremptoriness. "Carlotta, you are one too many, my love. You will have to sit in my lap."

"I'm getting out," said Phil. "I'm due across the river. Want Ted to take the wheel, Doctor?"

"I do not. I have a wife and children at home. I cannot afford to place my life in jeopardy." The doctor's eyes twinkled as they rested a moment on his youngest nephew.

"Now,