"Are you ready, Aunt Emily?" she asked.
"Of course, dear—if you want to go so soon. But wouldn't you like to stay and see your friends, and thank them?"
"Oh, I'll write notes," replied Linda.
"There's Ralph Clavering over there," remarked Miss Carlton, nodding in the direction of a tall, well-dressed young man on the other side of the lawn. "You could thank him for his flowers. He'll probably think it queer if you don't, especially since you didn't wear them."
Linda smiled carelessly.
"Ralph Clavering probably sent roses to half a dozen girls today," she said lightly. "It's his boast that he's in love with the whole class!... No, I want to go home, Auntie. I'm tired."
"Certainly, dear. We'll go right away."
Nodding to friends as they walked across the beautiful garden where the out-door exercises had been held, they came to Linda's shining sports roadster, parked just outside the gate. It had been her father's present to her on the day that she was sixteen, and she had taken such care of it that even now, after a year and a half, it looked almost new.
"I think it was wonderful for you to receive the bracelet as the most popular girl," Miss Carlton said, as she got into the car. "Everything was really perfect—even the prophecy about your future."
Linda frowned at the recollection of those words; she hadn't liked that prophecy at all. As perhaps only Ted Mackay realized, her ambition was to fly, to fly so expertly that she could go to strange lands, do a man's work perhaps, carry out missions of importance. She wanted to be known as one of the best—if not the best—aviatrix in America!