usual goodnight kiss her eyes were a little dim with tears. She struggled to hide them, and, excusing herself on the pretext of unpacking her trunks, started for the stairs.

Miss Clyde had risen from her chair as Blue Bonnet rose from the piano. She waited until Blue Bonnet had said good night to her grandmother, then she put her arm affectionately over the girl's shoulder and patted her reassuringly.

"I hope our little girl is not going to be homesick," she said. "There will be much to do in the next three months—much that is pleasant. Some day soon you and I will run up to Boston and have a look at Miss North's school and find out something about its requirements. We shall have a good deal of shopping to do, too. Suitable frocks play as important a part at boarding-school as elsewhere."

Miss Clyde smiled one of her rare sweet smiles, and Blue Bonnet felt as if a weight had been lifted from her heart.

"Aunt Lucinda is a good deal of a dear," she said to herself, as she perched on the window-seat in her bedroom and looked out into the moonlight. "She wants me to be happy. I suppose she doesn't always understand me, any more than I do her. I reckon we'll have to sort of take each other on faith." And lightly humming a little tune she jumped up from the window-seat and plunged madly into the unpacking.

"As long as this is Saturday, would you mind, Grandmother, if I had the girls in this afternoon?" Blue Bonnet inquired at the breakfast-table next morning. And Mrs. Clyde replied:

"Not at all, dear. They will be so busy in school during the week. I will see what Katie has planned for to-day, and, if she can manage it, you might ask them to lunch."

A visit to the kitchen resulted favorably.

"Oh, you're such a duck, Grandmother," Blue Bonnet assured her. "I'll 'phone them right up," an operation which consumed the better part of an hour, since there was so much to relate after a separation of several weeks.

"I'll just run down to the barn and give Chula a lump of sugar and feed Solomon the first thing," Blue Bonnet said as she turned from the telephone.

"Have you made your room tidy?" Miss Clyde inquired, coming out in to the hall at that moment.

"Oh, dear, history repeats itself, doesn't it, Aunt Lucinda?" Blue Bonnet's good-natured laugh was contagious. Miss Clyde smiled in spite of herself.

"I haven't made my bed yet, Aunt Lucinda, if that's what you mean. I hate making it up warm—it's not sanitary, is it? You've said so yourself, often."

Miss Clyde's smile deepened. Blue Bonnet's sudden conversion to the laws of hygiene was too amusing.

"I fancy two hours of this autumn air will have restored its freshness," she said. "Have you finished your unpacking?"

Blue Bonnet recalled the piles of fluffy whiteness that covered chairs and window-seat, and, turning, went up-stairs quickly.

It took some time to get the room in proper order. It might, not have taken so long if the view from the south window had not been so pleasant. Out in the garden the dahlias and coreopsis nodded and beckoned coaxingly, the soft wind stirred the leaves in the apple-trees, and Solomon frisked and rolled with glee in the sunshine.

At last it was finished, at least the furniture had been relieved of its burdens, and the bed made in the most approved fashion. Blue Bonnet was free to join Solomon, and to gather a great bunch of the golden-hued coreopsis to adorn the lunch table. She was thinking of a little plan, as she cut the long stems and arranged the flowers with taste and precision; a little plan she had barely time to execute before Kitty Clark's familiar, "Ooh-hoo, Ooh-hoo!" echoed from somewhere in the vicinity of the front gate.

"I suppose I'm loads too early, but I could hardly wait to see you, Blue Bonnet," was her cheery greeting. "We've all been pining away for you. New York must have been fascinating to have kept you so long."

Blue Bonnet admitted that it was. She even opened her lips to tell of some of its enchantments, but Kitty went on irrelevantly:

"You've missed a heap at school. I suppose you can catch up, but you'll have to dig in, I can tell you. The Czar"—Kitty's name for Mr. Hunt—"isn't bestowing any more favors than usual."

Blue Bonnet's first impulse was to tell Kitty that she would not be back in school with the We Are Sevens this year, but she thought better of it and waited.

Kitty rambled on.

"Latin's a perfect fright and—oh, Blue Bonnet, what, do you think? Miss Rankin's engaged! Yes, she is, honest, truly. She's got a ring, a beauty! She wore it turned in the first two weeks, but now she's picked up courage and turned it round so everybody can see it. She's going to quit after Christmas. They're going to live in Boston. He's a lawyer—Sarah Blake's father knows him, and says he's right nice."

Kitty's patronizing air nettled Blue Bonnet as much as it amused her.

"Why shouldn't he be nice?" she inquired a bit sharply. "Miss Rankin's nice herself."

The remark went over Kitty's head, and the appearance of Sarah Blake down the roadway put a stop to the gossip.

It was the gayest kind of a little party that made the rafters in Mrs. Clyde's dining-room ring with laughter an hour later. Blue Bonnet had insisted upon Grandmother and Aunt Lucinda lunching with them, so Mrs. Clyde sat at one end of the broad board and Miss Clyde at the other.

Blue Bonnet's coreopsis had been rearranged, and put in a charming brown basket. From beneath the basket, and quite concealed from sight, were seven little boxes attached to yellow ribbons which ran to each of the We Are Sevens' plates.

Blue Bonnet could scarcely wait for the dessert to be cleared away before she told the girls to pull the ribbons.

When the boxes came in view there was a scream of delight.

Nimble-fingered Kitty was the first to open hers, and the rest were not long following suit, revealing to the enraptured gaze quaint and oddly designed gold rings, the monogram of the We Are Sevens forming a seal.

There was a rush for Blue Bonnet's side of the table, where that young person was deluged with caresses and many expressions of gratitude.

"It's Uncle Cliff—he did it," Blue Bonnet managed to say when she could extricate herself. "That is, he suggested it—gave me the money—and I had them made at Tiffany's."

There was a chorus of praise for Uncle Cliff, which must have made his ears ring to the point of deafness, even in far-off Texas.

Amanda made a suggestion.

"Let's go up-stairs in the clubroom and organize a Sorority. W. A. S. looks kind of Greeky in a monogram. We can have rings instead of pins for our insignia."

The idea met with instant favor. There was another rush for the stairs, and a few moments later the Club members were comfortably settled in their quarters with Amanda in the Chair.

Amanda was not quite clear as to the manner of procedure, but she gracefully waved a tack hammer found on the window-sill, in lieu of a gavel, and demanded order.

When quiet at last descended upon the disturbed and noisy assemblage, Blue Bonnet asked if she might have the floor. She looked appealingly at the Chair.

Debby rose to a point of order.

"We've got to elect officers," she said. "Amanda hasn't been elected. I move that Blue Bonnet Ashe be our chairman."

This Was the very opportunity Blue Bonnet wanted for her announcement. She made Debby a profound bow, pushing Amanda out of the way unceremoniously.

"I thank you all for this very great honor," she began, clearing her throat in the most professional manner. She had once attended a woman's club with