"There she is!" Grace hurried forward, her hands outstretched. The next instant they were held in Mrs. Elwood's welcoming grasp, while she kissed Grace's soft cheek.
"My dear, dear girl!" she exclaimed, a suspicious moisture in her kindly blue eyes. "It does seem good to see you again. I'm very glad to welcome you to Overton, Mrs. Gray," she turned to shake hands with the donor of Harlowe House, "and delighted to know that you are going to stay with me instead of going to the Tourraine. Miss Harlowe's old room is ready for her, and I'm going to put you in the room Miss Nesbit and Miss Briggs used to have."
"You'll be haunted by the kimono-clad shades of Miriam and Elfreda drinking tea and eating cakes at unseemly hours of the night," laughed Grace.
"How are all my girls?" asked Mrs. Elwood. "I don't know what I shall do without them this year. You will have to come and see me often and tell me all about them, Miss Harlowe. Now let me see. There ought to be a taxicab just the other side of the station. Yes, there it is."
The driver touched his cap smilingly to Grace as they climbed into the automobile, "It does look good to see you here again, miss," he said respectfully.
"Thank you. I'm glad to see you again." Grace beamed whole-heartedly upon him. How many times he had carried her to and from the station. It was he who had driven the car on that memorable day when Ruth Denton had gone to the station to meet her father. Grace's eyes grew dreamy as they passed through the familiar streets. How much had happened since the time when she had entered Oakdale High School as a freshman with college in the far and hidden future.
To her many friends "Grace Harlowe's Plebe Year at High School," "Grace Harlowe's Sophomore Year at High School," "Grace Harlowe's Junior Year at High School," and "Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School" are now familiar records. Equally well known to these friends is the story of her freshman year at Overton, as set forth in "Grace Harlowe's First Year at Overton College."
Accompanied by her friends, Miriam Nesbit and Anne Pierson, Grace began her freshman year at Overton College under a cloud which rose from her ready defense of J. Elfreda Briggs, a disgruntled student who had made enemies of two sophomores, and whose first days at college were made very unpleasant by them. J. Elfreda's subsequent casting aside of her friendship and her tardy realization of Grace's worth brought about a happy ending of their freshman year.
In "Grace Harlowe's Second Year at Overton College" the four girls set out to find the rainbow side of their sophomore year. How each girl found it, but in an entirely different manner, how Grace lived up to her resolve to choose only the highest in college, and how the famous Semper Fidelis Club came into existence, made the sophomore year in college memorable.
"Grace Harlowe's Third Year at Overton College" told of what befell the four friends as juniors. The advent of Kathleen West, a newspaper girl, into college was the first link in a chain of petty difficulties with which Grace was obliged to contend as a junior. The carnival given by the Semper Fidelis Club in which the Alice in Wonderland Circus was enacted, the important part which Jean, the old hunter of Oakdale fame, played in one Overton girl's life, the message Emma Dean forgot to deliver, and countless other absorbing incidents served to fill their junior year with ceaseless interest.