A week later Vine Haven Seminary had settled back into its usual routine. Mrs. Martin had returned rested and enthusiastic over the interesting trip that she had taken. Of course Mrs. Dorsey had thought right to tell all that had happened, and even offered to resign if Mrs. Martin felt that she had been at fault, but the principal, who was always just, assured the anxious matron that she was in no way at fault nor indeed did she blame the girls.
Eleanor had not appeared until the morning when the first classes were to report and then she told her friends how overjoyed Winston and his mother had been to be reunited. “And the best of it is that the two sisters are going to stay on grandfather’s place and make a real home of it, and Winston’s dream has come true for he has a farm of his own to do with whatever he wishes, and, as for Peggy, next year she is to come to Vine Haven with me.”
The girls were all unusually studious during the remainder of May, for were not the final exams near at hard, and Virg had added to her other duties, the pleasure of editing the last Manuscript Magazine for the year.
And yet there were hours, and many of them (usually at night when the other girls were asleep), that she lay, watching the stars, and yearning for the loved ones on the far away desert. “Would she find any changes?” she wondered.
CHAPTER XXX
BETSY’S SECRET GOAL
“Girls! News! News! Great news!” It was Margaret Selover who skipped into the corner room occupied by Virg and Eleanor Burgess.
“Mrs. Martin just told me that Eleanor Pettes’ college closes a few days before Vine Haven and she has written that she will come for our final exercises. She’s ever so eager to see our last Manuscript Magazine of the year.”
“Well, it’s to be a spiffy one all right. My name is going to be in it.”
“Oh, Betsy, I don’t believe it! Virg, she’s storying, isn’t she? You never would print one of her doggerels, would you?”
The editor of the magazine laughed and actually winked at Betsy. With a chuckle that little maid asked: “Won’t Margaret be the most surprised person in this school when she does see the reason for my name being in the bang-up last edition?”