“How did Betty happen to lose her pin?” asked Eloise. “I wonder where it could be.”
“That is what Betty wonders. She doesn’t even know when it was lost, because, you know we keep our pins pinned on something for days at times. She thought that she took it off a wool frock to pin on a silk one, but she has hunted her dresses over, besides bureau drawers and every crack about the suite.”
It seemed that Greycliff days had wings. The girls complained that teachers in every course demanded more and more. “Patty thinks that we are taking nothing but her Latin and English,” remarked Cathalina, “and Dr. Carver is going to have us cover more ground this year in what is college Sophomore Latin than any class ever did. She said so! But she actually complimented the class on doing it, can you imagine it, Isabel?”
“I can not. I should pass into unconsciousness if I heard anything of the sort from her. But I am sorry for her. She had an awful time at first because she studied in Germany and couldn’t believe that they started things, and then she was more than half in love with Prof. Schaefer they say, and mad because the girls didn’t sign up for German, but after a talk with Miss Randolph she came around and there has been a distinct coolness between her and Prof. Schaefer of late.”
“Really, Isabel?” asked Hilary. “Cathalina and I once thought that it would be a match.”
“Once Miss Randolph told me a little about her life, girls,” said Cathalina, “and she has had a pretty hard experience, Miss Randolph said. It did not make me think any more of her methods, but has helped me to stand it. And she certainly does know what she is talking about. There are lots of different people in this world, aren’t there? I don’t suppose I would have known it if I hadn’t come to Greycliff, but it will make me interested in people outside the family circle now.”
“To go back to our work,” said Hilary, “our music director says that there never has been such a concert as he expects to have the girls give this Commencement, when all the parents and everybody can be here. The practice is taking a good deal of time, but it is such fun! There is the Glee Club and the double quartette and the orchestra—all practicing the most beautiful things! Lil is to sing as her second number one of her own songs, and Phil is writing the accompaniment for her now, in between times at camp. Aunt Hilary is coming this time to see her little namesake perform!”
“O, I heard a red-winged blackbird today, girls,” said Juliet, “down by the river near that place where the cattails grow. They will be nesting there.”
“That is fine,” said Hilary. “I must go down there; I haven’t one on my list yet. I was just thinking of how wonderful it all is this morning when I first woke up. I heard a bluebird and a robin singing, and I began to think about all the wings starting North on the spring migration. The Bible says something about the land of the ‘rustling of wings’ and that is what is happening now. Can’t you imagine how it is, some warm night when the wood warblers are flying, tiny little things with their weeny wings, and then the big birds, like the water birds. Then—presto—the sun comes up and lights up all the bright colors, the scarlet tanager and the rose-breasted grosbeak, the indigo bunting and the bluebird, the orange and black of the Blackburnian warbler, the cardinal,—come on, I’m going to get my glass and go down to the beach!”
“All right, Hilary, but remember that your flight of imagination looked forward into May. Don’t expect to find a rose-breasted grosbeak this afternoon.”