"A secret from me?" cried Helen, in amazement.
"I—I couldn't tell even you, dearie, just now," Ruth said, with sudden seriousness. "But you shall know about it before anybody else."
"That Mr. Hammond is in it."
"Yes," admitted her chum. "That is just it. I don't feel that I can speak to anybody about it yet."
"Oh! then it's his secret?"
"Partly," Ruth said, her eyes dancing, for there and then, right at that very moment, she fell upon the subject for the first scenario she intended to submit to Mr. Hammond. It was "Curiosity"—a new version of Pandora's Box.
Helen was such a sweet-tempered girl that her chum's little mystery did not cause her more than momentary vexation.
Besides, their vacation time was now very short. Many things had to be discussed about the coming semester. At its end, in June, Ruth and Helen hoped to graduate from Briarwood Hall.
The thought of graduating from the school they loved so much was one of mingled pleasure and pain. Old Briarwood! where they had had so much fun—so many girlish sorrows—friends, enemies, struggles, triumphs, failures and successes! Neither chum could contemplate graduation lightly.
"If we go to college together, it will never seem like Briarwood Hall," Helen sighed. "College will be so big. We shall be lost among so many girls—some of them grown women!"