wept because they had. Still, Sunday after Sunday evening they sang the same sorrowful hymns because it seemed the proper thing to do, and then retired sniffling and snuffling to their narrow, single beds.

“They like it,” declared Mrs. Henry Rhodes. “Boarding school girls always do it, and they wouldn’t do it if they didn’t enjoy it.”

There was one Sunday evening, however, when the gloom was somewhat lightened; and when giggles supplanted sobs. Stout Miss Woodruff, clad in her smooth gray serge gown, with its white vest for Sunday use only, usually sat in a large arm-chair at the end of the room, in order to lend dignity to the meeting. But on this occasion she was absent and had asked Abbie to take her place. Poor scatter-brained Abbie had forgotten all about it so the chair was vacant. But not for long.

The chief ornament of the high mantel shelf was a large stuffed bird—a penguin. When it became evident to the waiting girls that no one was coming to occupy that vacant chair, Maude Wilder, always resourceful, climbed upon a chair, seized the stately penguin and placed him in the chair. With his dignity, his mildly disapproving eye and his smooth gray and white plumage, his resemblance to stern Miss Woodruff—vest and all—was so striking and so amusing that the astonished girls burst forth with a chorus of giggles instead of words when Mrs. Henry Rhodes, at the piano, played the opening notes of the first hymn.

Of course Mrs. Henry turned around to see what caused this most unusual hilarity. When she saw the solemn penguin doing his birdlike best to be human and succeeding so admirably in filling Miss Woodruff’s place, Mrs. Henry not only giggled but laughed outright; and all the pupils, including the lofty Seniors, joined in. For the rest of the evening, even the saddest hymns failed to bring on a single case of homesickness.