summer, and you two”—indicating the other B’s—“have got to come and help save them from early deaths.”

“All right,” said Babe easily, “only I shall wade too.”

“And you’ve got to wash them up before I can touch them,” stipulated the fastidious Babbie. “Where have you been all summer, Rachel?”

“Right at home, helping in an office during the day and tutoring evenings. And I’ve saved enough so that I shan’t have to worry one single bit about money this year,” announced Rachel triumphantly.

“Good for old Rachel!” cried Madeline Ayres, who had spent the summer nursing her mother through a severe illness and looked worn and thin in consequence. “Then you’re as glad to get back to the grind as I am. Betty here, with her summer on an island in Lake Michigan, and Eleanor, and these lucky B’s with their childless farms, and their Parisian raiment, don’t know what it’s like to be back in the arms of one’s friends.”

“Don’t we!” cried a protesting chorus.

“Don’t you what?” called a voice out of the darkness, and the real Georgia Ames, cheerful and sunburned and self-possessed shook hands all around, and found a seat behind Madeline on the piazza railing.

“You were all so busy talking that you didn’t see me at the train,” she explained coolly. “A tall girl with glasses asked if there was anything she could do for me, and I said oh, no, that I’d been here before. Then she asked me my name, and when I said Georgia Ames, I thought she was going to faint.”

“She took you for a ghost, my dear,” said Madeline, patting her double’s shoulder affectionately. “You must get used to being treated that way, you know. You’re billed to make a sensation in spite of yourself.”

“But we’re going to make it up to you all we can,” chirped Babbie.

“And you bet we can,” added Bob decisively.

“Let’s begin by escorting her home,” suggested Babe. “There’s just about time before ten.”

“I saw Miss Stuart yesterday about her coming into the Belden,” explained Betty, after they had left Georgia at her temporary off-campus boarding place. “She was awfully nice and amused about it all, and she thinks she can get her in right away, in Natalie Smith’s place. Natalie’s father has been elected senator, you know, and she’s going to come out this winter in Washington.”

“Fancy that now!” said Madeline resignedly. “There’s certainly no accounting for tastes.”

“I should think not,” declared Katherine hotly. “If my father was elected President, I’d stay on and graduate with 19— just the same.”

“Of course you would,” agreed Babbie. “You can come out in Washington any time—or if you can’t, it doesn’t matter much. But there’s only one 19—.”

“And yet when we go we shan’t be missed,” said Katherine sadly. “The college will go on just the same.”

“Oh, and I’ve found out the reason why,” cried Betty eagerly. “It’s because all college girls are alike. Miss Ferris said so once. She said if you waited long enough each girl you had known and liked would come back in the person of some younger one. But I never really believed it until to-day.” And Betty related the story of her successful hunt for the freshman who was like herself.

Everybody laughed.

“But then,” asserted Babbie loyally, “she’s not so nice as you, Betty. She couldn’t be. And I don’t believe there are freshmen like all of us.”

“Not in this one class,” said Rachel. “But it’s a nice idea, isn’t it? When our little sisters or our daughters come to Harding they can have friends just as dear and jolly as the ones we have had.”

“And they will be just as likely to be locked out if they linger on their own or their friends’ door-steps after ten,” added Madeline pompously, whereat Eleanor, Katherine, Rachel and the B’s rushed for their respective abiding places, and the Belden House contingent marched up-stairs singing

a parody of one of Kipling’s “Barrack-Room Ballads” which Madeline Ayres had written one morning during a philosophy lecture that bored her, and which the whole college was singing a week later.

It was great fun exercising all the new senior privileges. One of the first and most exciting was occupying the front seats at morning chapel.

“Although,” complained Betty Wales sadly, “you don’t get much good out of that, if your name begins with a W. Of course I am glad there are so many of 19—, but they do take up a lot of room. Nobody could tell that Eleanor and I were seniors, unless they knew it beforehand.”

“And then they wouldn’t believe it about you,” retorted Madeline, the tease.

Madeline, being an A, was one of the favored front row, who were near enough “to catch Prexy’s littlest smiles,” as Helen Adams put it, and who were the observed of all observers as they marched, two and two, down the middle aisle, just behind the faculty. Madeline, being tall and graceful and always perfectly self-possessed, looked very impressive, but little Helen Adams was dreadfully frightened and blushed to the roots of her smooth brown hair every morning.

“And yet I wouldn’t give it up for anything,” she confided to Betty. “I mean—I’ll exchange with you any time, but I do just love to sit there, although I dread walking out so. It’s just the same when I am talking to Miss Raymond or Miss Mills. I wish I weren’t such a goose.”

“You’re a very dear little goose,” Betty reassured her, wondering why in the world the clever Helen Adams was afraid of people, while she, who was only little Betty Wales, without much brains and with no big talent, felt perfectly at home with Dr. Hinsdale, Miss Raymond, and even the great “Prexy” himself.

“I suppose that is my talent,” she decided at last,—“not being afraid, and just plunging right in. Well, I suppose I ought to be glad that I have anything.”

Another senior privilege is the holding of the first class-meeting. Fresh indeed is the freshman class which neglects this order of precedence, and in deference to their childish impatience the seniors always hold their meeting as early in the term as possible. Of course 19—’s came on a lovely afternoon,—the first after an unusually long and violent “freshman rain.”

“Coming, Madeline?” asked Betty, passing Madeline’s single on her way out.

“Where?” inquired Madeline lazily from the depths of her Morris chair.

“To the class-meeting of course,” explained Betty. “Now don’t pretend you’ve forgotten and made another engagement. I just heard Georgia Ames telling you that she couldn’t go walking because of an unexpected written lesson.”

Madeline wriggled uneasily. “What’s the use?” she objected. “It’s too nice a day to waste indoors. There’ll be nothing doing for us. We elected Rachel last year, and none of the rest of the crowd will do for class officers.”

“What an idea!” said Betty loftily. “I’m thinking of nominating Babe for treasurer. Besides Rachel is going to wear a cap and gown—it’s a new idea that the council thought of, for the senior president to wear one—and Christy and Alice Waite are going to make speeches about the