“If you’ll all say you’ll come,” said Madge, smiling broadly, “we’ll just have the lov-li-est time!”
“But we’ll have to write home for permission,” Lluella Fairfax ventured.
“Of course we shall,” chimed in Helen.
“Then do so at once,” commanded the senior. “You see, this will be my graduation party. No more Briarwood for me after this June, and I don’t know what I shall do when I go to Poughkeepsie next fall and leave all you ‘Infants’ behind here——”
“Infants! Listen to her!” shouted Belle Tingley. “Get out of here!” and under a shower of sofa pillows Madge Steele had to retire from the room.
Ruth slipped away easily after that, for the other girls were gabbling so fast over the invitation for the early summer vacation, that they did not notice her departure.
This was the hour she had promised to meet the strange girl in whom she had taken such a great interest the night before—it was between the two morning recitation hours.
She ran down past the end of the dormitory building into the head of the long serpentine path, known as the Cedar Walk. The lines of closely growing cedars sheltered her from observation from any of the girls’ windows.
The great bell in the clock tower boomed out ten strokes as Ruth reached the muddy road at the end of the walk. Nobody was in sight. Ruth looked up and down. Then she walked a little way in both directions to see if the girl she had come to meet was approaching.
“I—I am afraid she isn’t going to keep her word,” thought Ruth. “And yet—somehow—she seemed so frank and honest——”