“Go riding with me at sunrise tomorrow morning, will you, like we used to do before I went away to school. There’s a lot I want to say, and the day after I’m going to be packed off to the academy again to be tortured for another month; then, thanks be, vacation will let me out of that prison for a while.” Roberta hesitated, and Dick urged: “Go on, Bob! Be a sport. Say yes.”

“All right. I’ll be at the Twin Oaks, where we’ve met ever since we were little shavers.”

When the door closed behind the departing guests Gloria turned to the sister, who was but one year her junior, and said: “Gwendolyn, I am sorry to say this, but the good of the larger number requires it. If you cannot face the changed conditions cheerfully with us, I shall have to ask you to make your plans independent of us. We three have decided to be brave and courageous, and try to find joy and happiness in whatever may present itself, just as our mother and father would wish us to do, and just as they would have done had similar circumstances overtaken them.”

Gwendolyn rose and walked toward the door, but turned to say, “You need not concern yourselves about me in the least. I shall not go with you to New York. I shall visit my dear friend Eloise Rochester in Newport, as she has often begged me to do.”

“An excellent plan, if——” Gloria began, then paused.

Gwendolyn turned and inquired haughtily, “If what?”

“If Eloise wants you when she hears that you have neither home nor wealth. If I am anything of a character reader, I should say that the invitation about which you have just told was merely a bait, so to speak, for a return invitation. It is quite evident that Eloise has decided to marry Richard De Laney’s million-dollar inheritance, and since Phyllis will not invite her to their home you, as a next-door neighbor, can be used to advantage.”

“Indeed? Well, luckily Miss Vandergrift, you are not a character reader, as you will learn in the near future. You three make whatever plans you wish, but do not include me.” So saying, Gwendolyn left the room and a few moments later the three sisters heard her moving about in the apartment overhead, and they correctly assumed that she was packing, preparatory for her departure to Newport.

Gloria sighed: “I wonder why Gwen is so unlike our mother and father?” she said.

“I have it,” Bobs cried, whirling about with eyes laughingly aglow. “She’s a changeling! A discontented nurse girl wished to wreak vengeance upon Mother for having discharged her, or something like that, and so she stole the child who really was our sister and left this——”

“Don’t, Bobsie!” Lena May protested. “Even if Gwen is selfish, maybe we are to blame. She was ill for so long after Mother died that we couldn’t bear the thought of having two deaths, and so we rather spoiled her. I believe that if we meet her contrariness with love and are very patient we may find the gold that must be in her nature, since she is our mother’s child.”

“You can do it, if it’s do-able, Lena May,” Bobs declared. “Now, Gloria, break the glad news! When do we hit the trail for the big town?”

“I’m going in tomorrow to find a place for us to live. If you girls wish, you may accompany me.”

“Wish? Why, all the king’s oxen and all the king’s men couldn’t keep me from going.”

Gloria smiled at her hoidenish sister but refrained from commenting on her language. She was so thankful that there was only one Gwen in the family that she could overlook lesser failings. Bobs was taking the mishap that had befallen them as a great adventure, but even she did not dream of the truly exciting adventures that lay before them.

CHAPTER II.
A PROPOSAL

Soon after daybreak the next morning, down a deserted country road, two thoroughbred horses were galloping neck and neck.

“Gee along, Star,” Bobs was shouting. She had lost her hat a mile back and her short hair, which would ripple, though she tried hard to brush out the natural curls, was tossed about her head, making her look more hoidenish than ever.

Dick, on his slender brown horse, gradually won a lead and was a length ahead when they reached the Twin Oaks, which for many years had been their trysting place. Roberta and Dick had been playmates and then pals, squabbling and making up, ever since the pinafore days, more, however, like two boys than a boy and a girl. Bobs, in fact, never thought of herself as a young person who in due time would become a marriageable young lady, and so it was with rather a shock of surprise that she heard Dick say, when they had drawn their horses to a standstill in the shade of the wide-spreading trees: “I say, Roberta, couldn’t you cut out this going to work stuff and marry me?”

“Ye gods and little fishes! Me marry you?” Bobs’ remark and the accompanying expression in her round, sunburned face, with its pertly tilting freckled nose, were none too complimentary.

Dick flushed. “Well, I say! What’s the matter with me, anyhow? Anyone might think, by the way you’re staring, that I had said something dreadful. I’m not deformed, am I? And I’ve got money enough so you wouldn’t have to work ever and——”

Roberta became a girl at once, a girl with a sincere nature and a tender heart. Reaching out a strong brown hand, she placed it kindly on the arm of her friend. “Dicky, boy, forgive me, if—if I was a little astonished and showed it. Truth is, for so many years I’ve thought of you as the playmate I could always count on to fight my battles, that I’d sort of forgotten that we were grown up enough to even think of marrying. Of course we aren’t grown up enough yet to really marry, for you are only nineteen, and I’m worse than that, being not yet seventeen. And as for money, Dick, I’d like you heaps better if you were poor and working your way, but I know that you meant what you said most kindly. You wanted to save me from hard knocks, but, Dick, honest Injun, I revel in them. That is, I suppose I will. Never having had one as yet, I can’t speak from past experience.”

Then they rode slowly back to find the hat that had blown off into the bushes. Dick rescued it, and when he returned it he handed her a spray from a blossoming wild rose vine.

The lad did not again refer to his offer, and the girl, he noted with an inward sigh, had evidently forgotten all about it. She was gazing about her appreciatively. “Dicky boy,” she exclaimed, “there’s nothing much prettier than early morning in the country, is there, with the dew still sparkling—and a meadow lark singing,” she added, for at that moment a joyous song arose from a near-by thicket.

For a time they were silent as they rode slowly back by the way they had come. Then Dick said, “Bobs, since you love the country so dearly, aren’t you afraid you’ll be homesick in that human whirlpool, New York?”

The girl turned toward him brightly. “Perhaps, sometimes,” she replied. “But it isn’t far to the country when I feel the need of a deep breath of fresh air.” Then her face saddened as she continued: “Of course we won’t be coming out here any more.” She waved toward the vast estate which for many years had been the home of Vandergrifts. “We couldn’t stand it, not one of us could, to see strangers living where Mother and Father were so happy. They’ll probably change things a lot.” Then she added almost passionately: “I hope they will. Then, if ever I do see it