The door opened and Renee came in. She was robed in a full-length kimona.
"You girls sitting here doing nothing! I am packing. I do not intend letting it go until morning and then hurrying. My trunk is locked and I cannot find the keys. Will you lend me yours, Helen?"
Helen arose to get them from a drawer. Emma sighed as she looked at Renee.
"When I go to heaven," she said, "and meet Renee there, I know what she will say to me the very first thing."
The girls looked their queries and Emma concluded, "'Emma, please lend me your crown. I've mislaid mine.'"
"And Emma will be finding fault with everything. She'll feel dreadful because she is forced to be in heaven all the time," said Sara slowly. This was a hit direct at the little Dutch doll, for all through the year she had been complaining at the restrictions of school, and could not understand why Doctor Weldon did not allow the girls to go down to the city when they pleased.
During this conversation, Mame Cross had been sitting apart. Now Josephine turned to her, and assuming an attitude and expression of great solicitation and interest said, "Mame is the only one who feels what this evening means to us. Perhaps never again shall we talk together. No one knows what the summer will bring. Mame is overcome by the thought—."
"I am not. I was not thinking of that at all," Mame replied. "It came to me while the girls were talking of the banquet and play and commencement that I was almost glad that we were not having any of them."
"Mame Cross, what heresy! The flood has made her mad," cried the girls.
"I have reasons for thinking so. I simply could not have gone to one thing. What could I have worn if I had gone? I made up my mind when we had our last reception that I would never go to another unless I had something decent to wear."