very inelegantly. “You can all turn the other cheek if you want to,” she insisted, “but I’m not going to. She’s just a mean hateful old thing, and I don’t care what you think, Nan. I’m going to watch her. You had better do it too, if you’re going to live to go to Europe.”

At this, Grace giggled. “Nan could live through almost anything, I believe,” she said. “Mama says she never knew a girl who at Nan’s age had had so many adventures and had come up so smiling from all of them. Dad agrees. He thinks Nan has a charmed life, that she has at least nine lives—”

“Like a cat?” Nan interrupted, for she was embarrassed at this praise of herself. Now, her eyes twinkled as the girls all laughed. Nan was really a charming girl. Her clear brown eyes were frank and trusting. Her brown, bobbed hair, cut in a wind-blown style and brushed so that it shone and looked soft and silky, gave her an almost boyish appearance. But her quick sympathy, her readiness to help anyone in distress, and her fondness for children made a real girl of her. Everyone liked her, but Bess Harley liked her most of all.

Bess was a pretty girl with curly hair. Though indulgent parents had spoiled her so that she was inclined to over-value the luxuries money could buy, her constant association with Nan through the years had somewhat remedied that. However, this New Year’s Eve, she did feel out of sorts. The thought of being separated from Nan was still new to her. Moreover, she was envious. She had heard some place that Linda Riggs was going to spend the summer in Europe, and she did not want Linda to go any place that she couldn’t go. Now, as she sat quietly, after expressing herself on the matter of that overly proud young person, she was really thinking of ways and means of persuading her parents to let her go to Europe, too.

“Anyway,” Grace brought the girls back to the subject of Linda, “maybe Nan is right. So, I hereby resolve,” she said solemnly, “to be nice to Linda Riggs for one whole month, the month of January. During that time, I will not say one mean thing to her.”

“Bravo!” Nan applauded. “And you, Rhoda?”

But it was not Linda Riggs that troubled the pretty southern girl. She had really never had any direct contact with her. So when Nan turned to her, she began, “Well, Linda doesn’t really annoy me. I simply overlook her. But there is something else that does bother me. You all know that when I first came to Lakeview Hall, it was hard for me to fit into your way of doing things.”

The girls nodded their heads sympathetically. Rhoda had stood apart from them for some weeks after her arrival but they had forgiven her for her apparent misunderstanding of them. They had long before forgotten that she had been a “poor sport” at the hazing when she first entered Lakeview. Now Rhoda herself brought it back to mind.

“I simply couldn’t understand your way of making me welcome when I came north,” she said in her own soft southern drawl. “I puzzled about it for a long time, sure all the while that you were wrong and I was right!”

Nan caught her eye and smiled. “We were mean, weren’t we?” she admitted.

“Oh, Nan, it wasn’t you,” the loyal Bess interposed. “You tried to make everything easier for Rhoda, but we simply wouldn’t help you. Why, I believe we were jealous,” she ended as though the idea was an entirely new one. “Girls, remember how Rhoda looked the first time we ever saw her?”

They all nodded.

“You were lovely,” she went on speaking directly to Rhoda.

Rhoda blushed slightly at the frank praise, but Bess paid no heed. “You were dressed in the most perfect brown hat and coat I’ve ever seen,” she continued. “I’ll never forget it.”

“Nor will I,” Rhoda ruefully agreed. “I have never in my life felt so strange and so entirely alone. You were all talking among yourselves and having a grand time. Everyone seemed to know everyone else. I was such an outsider! And when Laura Polk addressed me as Rollicking Rhoda from Rustlers’ Roost, the wild Western adventuress that you had heard so much about, I wished that the floor would open wide and swallow me.

“Since it didn’t, I wanted to turn and run, run as fast as I could back to Rose Ranch and the people I knew. Have you ever felt like that?”

“Many, many times,” Grace agreed heartily. “I’ve wanted to run when I flunked in recitations before the whole class. I’ve wanted to go away and hide just dozens of times when things went wrong. I can hardly bear it when Mrs. Cupp tells me before everyone that Dr. Beulah wants to see me.”

“Especially when Linda Riggs is there and hears it and looks as though she was the most perfect person in the world,” Bess chimed in. “Sometimes, when I see her looking that way when you people have to go to the office, I feel as though I’d like to tell all I know about her.”

At a warning look from Nan, Bess subsided. Nan patted Grace on the shoulder. “You mustn’t take those things too seriously,” she said. “We all feel that way.”

“But you just can’t help yourself,” Rhoda continued. “My mother has always tried to teach me to have poise, but generally, when I feel as I did that night, I forget everything she has ever said, and I act like such a fool. I feel miserable afterwards, because I know how disappointed she would be.

“Now, I want to resolve to be a good sport, no matter what happens. I want to remember to stand my ground and not run just because things seem to be unpleasant.”

The girls were silent for a moment after this. Rhoda was so utterly sincere that they realized for the first time how unhappy she must have been in the days after her hazing, when for so long they ignored her.

“Well, I declare,” the cheery voice of Grace’s mother broke in on the silence. “A good old fashioned round table, I do believe!” She had entered the room quietly and now stood alone near the doorway. “I hate to send you all off to bed, but it really is getting late. Tomorrow you must all be up early, pack, and catch that early train for Lakeview. I promised Dr. Prescott on my word of honor that I’d have you all back to school on time.”

At this, the girls got up, wished one another and Mrs. Mason a Happy New Year, and then prepared for bed.

“It has been a happy, happy day,” each one thought as she pulled the covers up over her shoulders and fell off to sleep. It was only Nan who lay awake. She was thinking of her trip and wondering what lay before her. But had the others been able to see into the future, they, too, would have lain awake thinking, and planning, and hoping.

CHAPTER II
SECRETS

“Where’s Nan?” Rhoda whispered as she stuck her head into Bess and Nan’s room at Lakeview Hall.

Bess got up from the gayly covered studio couch where she had been reading and opened wide the door. “It’s all right. Come on in,” she invited. “Nan’s gone away for the afternoon, down to old Mrs. Bagley’s to see how she’s getting along.”

“How did you manage?” Rhoda asked as she pulled off her pretty brown sports coat. “Do you think she smells a plot.”

“Oh, I don’t think so. She’s been intending to go down there for some time, and today was the first free time she has had. I’m sure she doesn’t suspect, but we will have to be careful.”

“I know it! Nan’s so smart that she will catch on in a minute if we make her suspicious at all.” Rhoda lowered her