THE GIRL SCOUTS
ON THE RANCH.
CHAPTER I.
COMMENCEMENT WEEK.
Every door and every window of Miss Allen’s Boarding School stood wide open in hospitality to welcome the guests of the graduating class. For it was Commencement Week, and visitors were coming from far and wide to see the exercises.
Upstairs in the dormitories, confusion reigned everywhere. Trunks, half-packed, their lids wide open and their trays on the floor, lined the hallways; dresses were lying about in profusion on chairs and beds; great bunches of flowers filled the vases and pitchers; and rooms were bereft of their hangings and furnishings. Girls, girls everywhere! In party dresses or kimonos they rushed about their rooms or bent over their trunks in the hall. Everybody seemed in mad haste to accomplish the impossible.
Marjorie Wilkinson and Lily Andrews were no less excited than the other seniors. They not only shared in the mad whirl of social events and class activities, but as officers they were responsible for their success. When dances and picnics were to be arranged, studying and packing were out of the question for them.
But that afternoon there had been a slight lull in their program, and both girls were in their room, trying to make up for lost time. Marjorie, who had been struggling for half an hour with a buckle and a satin pump, finally put it aside in disgust.
“Lil, I can’t sew that thing on, so as to have it look right! Every needle breaks, and the stitches show besides!”
“Couldn’t you wear them without the buckles?” suggested her room-mate, looking up from the floor, where she was kneeling over a bureau drawer.
“No, the marks would show where the buckles were before,” replied Marjorie, in the most mournful tone.